Even if early Earth had water and oxygen, it still would have needed one essential ingredient for life—and for the modern world: heavy metals. From our smartphones to our bloodstreams, these elements are fundamental to both technology and biology. But where did they come from?
New research published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters has pointed to a surprising cosmic source: giant flares from magnetars, a rare type of neutron star with ultra-powerful magnetic fields. These eruptions, which can hurl matter across the galaxy and emit gamma ray bursts powerful enough to disturb Earth’s atmosphere, may have forged a significant share of the universe’s precious metals—including gold and uranium, the Washington Post reported.
“This is a very exciting development,” said Hsin-Yu Chen, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the study. “It shows new observational evidence for another way heavy elements can form in the universe.”
Beyond neutron star mergers
For years, astronomers believed most heavy elements were born in the cataclysmic collisions of neutron stars—ultra-dense remnants of supernova explosions. These events certainly produce metals: the 2017 detection of two neutron stars merging revealed enough gold to outweigh Earth several times over. But they are rare—occurring only once every 100,000 years or so—and tend to happen later in the history of galaxies.
That left a mystery: how did stars and planets that formed much earlier already contain heavy elements?
Enter the magnetar—a variant of the neutron star, but with magnetic fields billions of times stronger than Earth’s. When a magnetar erupts in a so-called “giant flare,” it can eject neutron-rich material at immense speeds into space. If that material cools fast enough, it can undergo rapid-neutron capture, forming the same kinds of heavy elements forged in mergers—but possibly more often and much earlier in galactic history.
The 2004 flare that shook Earth
To test the theory, researchers led by Columbia University doctoral student Anirudh Patel looked to the most famous magnetar flare on record. In 2004, a magnetar 30,000 light-years away erupted so violently that it altered Earth’s ionosphere—despite being on the far side of the galaxy.
Patel and his team predicted what kinds of elements should have formed in the flare and how much gamma-ray energy their radioactive decay would emit. Remarkably, when they compared this to the actual gamma ray data from the 2004 flare, the two matched.
“We were astonished at how well the numbers lined up,” said co-author Eric Burns, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University. “The flare produced a huge amount of heavier elements—more than the mass of Mars.”
Forged in fire, worn on Earth
The findings suggest that magnetar flares could account for 1 to 10 percent of all elements heavier than iron in the galaxy, with neutron star mergers contributing another portion. That still leaves a gap—but for the first time, scientists can firmly say that multiple types of stellar explosions played a role in shaping the periodic table.
“We can now say that your gold and platinum jewellery probably came from explosively flaring and merging neutron stars that operated in the billion years before the birth of the Sun,” said Anna Frebel, a professor of astrophysics at MIT, who was not involved in the study.
The next chapter: COSI and beyond
The research, supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy, opens the door to further discoveries. In 2027, the launch of NASA’s Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI)—a gamma-ray telescope—could help identify the specific elements produced by such cosmic events.
“We want to eventually complete the picture of the origin of heavy elements,” Patel said. “There are other astrophysical sites out there producing these metals—we just haven’t found them yet.”
Until then, the story of our gold rings and uranium cores will remain, at least partially, a gift from the violent, magnetic heartbeats of ancient stars.
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