A team led by Anirudh Patel discovered that magnetar flares may also produce gold, which was previously believed to come only from neutron star collisions.
The team found evidence of r-process nucleosynthesis in a 2004 magnetar flare, using gamma rays detected by NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
Magnetars are neutron stars with powerful magnetic fields that emit large bursts of energy.
The team found that the delayed gamma-ray emission from the flare matched the decay of radioactive isotopes created in the r-process, which produces heavy elements like gold.
This suggests that magnetars can eject neutron-rich material that forms gold and other heavy elements through r-process nucleosynthesis.
The study challenges the previous belief that gold comes only from neutron star mergers and suggests magnetars may have produced gold earlier in the universe's history.
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