Gold is rare both on Earth and in space, and it can only be created through extreme events such as two dead stars colliding.
Scientists observed two neutron stars (celestial objects that had previously exploded in supernova form) collide. After the collision a gentle glow was detected, most likely indicating gold and other heavy elements had been produced upon impact, a Center for Astrophysics press release reported.
"We estimate that the amount of gold produced and ejected during the merger of the two neutron stars may be as large as 10 moon masses - quite a lot of bling!" Lead author Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) said.
Gold cannot be created within stars like iron and carbon; instead it needs a cataclysmic event like this one. The event is known as a short gamma ray burst (GRB), which is a flash of high-energy light from an intense cosmic explosion.
The event was dubbed GRB 130603B.
Most of these "bursts" are found in the very distant galaxy, but this one was the closest one ever detected at 3.9 billion light-years away.
The GRB disappeared relatively quickly, but there was a glow believed to have been made up of infrared light.
"We've been looking for a 'smoking gun' to link a short gamma-ray burst with a neutron star collision. The radioactive glow from GRB 130603B may be that smoking gun," Wen-fai Fong, a graduate student at the CfA and a co-author of the paper, said.
The "afterglow" was unusual for a GRB event, its "brightness and behavior" was different from what has been observed in the past.
The team concluded about "one-hundredth of a solar mass material was ejected by the gamma ray burst," some of the material was believed to be gold.
Taking into consideration the amount of gold generated from GRB 130603B, all of the gold in the universe could have been created by similar event.
"To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we are all star stuff, and our jewelry is colliding-star stuff," Berger said.
