The Magnetar That Forged a Planet’s Worth of Gold in Half a Second

A powerful cosmic event from 2004—a gamma-ray burst from a magnetar 30,000 light-years away—has just been revealed as a major source of the universe’s heaviest elements like gold and platinum. Researchers have shown that this intense flare, brighter than anything seen before in our galaxy, created heavy elements through radioactive decay during the explosion. This [...]