Intergalactic gold

Finding the philosopher’s stone that turned base metal into gold was an ambition of man from the dawn of early civilisation to the Enlightenment. But the real source of this precious metal turns out to be more unlikely than any experiment conducted by alchemists. Scientists monitoring gamma-rays produced by the collision of two neutron stars millions of light years away have discovered that the energy released by this so-called kilonova created gold and other heavy elements like silver and platinum and flung them into space. Eventually they were brought to Earth by meteorites, leaving the metal close to the surface. They are the cinders forged in the billiondegree remnants of a merging neutron star. No wonder the alchemists could never create the necessary conditions to mass-produce the stuff.