The origin of precious metals on Earth

The origin of Earth’s precious metals could be much closer to being confirmed.

Precious metals such as gold, silver or platinum are heavy elements, and require an enormous amount of energy to complete the r-process necessary for their production.

This process requires a large amount of energy, and is not possible under current Earth conditions.

Recently, MIT has discovered a new galaxy, Reticulum II, 98,000 light years from Earth. Studies carried out on this galaxy indicate that it would be full of precious metals!

Therefore, it is believed that these must have arisen somewhere in the Universe under extreme conditions, where gigantic stellar explosions and neutron star mergers occur.

These collisions between neutron stars are common in the early stages of galaxies like Reticulum II.

In other words, neutron star mergers are responsible for the origin of the precious metals that we have today on Earth, since those that could have originated at the beginning of the formation of the Earth, being heavy elements , sank into the core due to gravity.

In fact, it is likely that all the precious metals we have on Earth were produced in a single neutron star merger.

The researchers’ hypothesis about how these elements arrived on our planet is that something similar to the origin of water happened; They traveled through the Universe in asteroids, until they reached our planet.