The really spectacular explosions in the universe involve the creation of black holes, the explosion of gas giants and pulsars.
Those fireworks are spectacular, but they only produce hydrogen, helium, lead and lots of obscure radioactive isotopes. It’s the cooler space collisions that forge more useful metals like iron, silver, platinum, diamond and gold.
New research suggests that all the gold on Earth might have come from the relatively unspectacular collision of cold dead stars.
Edo Berger, associate professor of astronomy at Harvard University, joins us to discuss this research.
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