LOUISIANA, USA (vox.com): Neutron stars are very strange objects. They’re the leftovers of stars that have collapsed in on themselves (i.e., gone supernova). They’re extremely dense. Imagine an object that has the same mass as the sun but is only 15 miles in diameter. That’s 333,000 times the mass of the entire Earth squished into a ball roughly the size of Manhattan. The pressure inside this object is so immense, the only things that can exist inside it are neutrons (protons fused with electrons).
In a galaxy 130 million light-years away, two of these objects were dancing around one another in orbit, growing closer and closer. Each was so dense and generated so much gravity that it caused tidal bulges on the other. The two collided, and the energy from the impact sent a wave of distorted spacetime across the universe, as well as a massive jet of particles out into space.
When those stars went supernova, even heavier elements were created. But it’s been “a mystery for a long time where gold and platinum come from,” one researcher explains. Even supernovae are not powerful enough to create those.
It had been theorized that a kilonova