People are drawn to precious metals for many reasons. While some of us are interested in metals like gold and silver as investment assets, they’re also captivating elements from a chemistry standpoint.
Have you ever thought about how elements like gold got here in the first place? The cosmic origins of gold and other precious metals is fascinating to say the least. And of all the elements created in space, people have always had a unique interest in gold. Not only is it shiny and luxurious, but gold is quite versatile, with uses spanning bullion and jewelry to dental crowns, electronics and more.
Gold holds great value for a handful of reasons. It has unique physical properties, like malleability and resistance to tarnish, and it’s a globally recognized form of currency. Gold is also one of Earth’s rarer metals – which leads us to wonder, is gold rare in space too?
The Cosmic Origins of Gold
Gold, along with other heavy elements like platinum, was formed in the heart of stars – especially the violent explosions of massive stars (supernovae) and neutron star collisions. Neutron stars are the dense remnants of giant stars that have exploded, and NASA estimates there are up to a billion of these stellar corpses in our Milky Way galaxy.
But let’s backtrack for a second. For those who need a quick refresher, here’s a quick recap of how the elements, including gold, were formed:
- Hydrogen and a small amount of helium were formed during the Big Bang, setting the stage for everything else.
- Most other elements, including gold, are made inside stars through stellar fusion. This process fuses lighter elements like hydrogen into heavier ones such as helium, carbon, oxygen, and iron. But for anything heavier than iron, more energy is required – enter the cosmic events of supernovae and neutron star collisions.
- During these extreme events, the r-process (rapid neutron capture) occurs, creating some of the heaviest elements like gold, platinum, and uranium.
Neutron Stars Collisions: A Source of Gold
Neutron stars are some of the densest objects in the universe. For scale, a neutron star may have a diameter of only about 12 miles – smaller than our home city of Philadelphia – but just a teaspoon of its material would weigh a staggering billion tons!
When two neutron stars collide, the extreme pressure and heat allow for the creation of heavier elements like gold through the r-process. In a nutshell, the r-process is when the atoms of lighter elements capture free neutrons, leading to the formation of heavier elements.
The force from a neutron star collision ejects the elements it created through space, where they eventually end up inside comets, asteroids, and planets like Earth. Interestingly, because gold is so dense, much of it sank to the core of Earth during our planet’s formation.
The Search for Our Neutron Star Merger
For years, astronomers have been trying to pinpoint the exact neutron star collision that formed the Earth’s gold. Recent discoveries, based on the study of meteorites, suggest that the merger likely happened 100 million years before the formation of our solar system, about 1,000 light-years away. While that sounds far, in space terms, it’s relatively close. As Columbia University physicist Szabolcs Marka put it, “If you looked up at the sky and saw a neutron star merger 1,000 light-years away, it would outshine the entire night sky.”
How Much Gold is in Space?
Since space is so vast, the amount of gold in the universe is difficult to estimate. But we do know that immense heat and energy from events like supernovae and neutron star collisions are required to produce gold. And because these events are relatively rare, it’s safe to assume that gold is rare in space.
That said, there’s obviously more gold in space than on Earth, just because space is unimaginably bigger than Earth. But all in all, we can conclude that gold is not among the most common elements out there.
Asteroid Mining: The Final Frontier for Gold
Humans have yet to go grab gold from space and bring it back to Earth, but they probably will one day, and it could be pretty soon. A handful of companies are already working on asteroid mining.
While there may not be gold nuggets floating around every corner in space, there should still be plenty to go around for the extraterrestrial miners. In fact, there’s an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter called 16 Psyche that scientists believe contains over 700 quintillion dollars in gold and other precious metals. That’s a lot of wedding bands and gold crowns!
Unsurprisingly, all of that potential value has inspired the creation of several asteroid mining companies. Planetary Resources, for example, raised $50 million in funding from 2012 to 2016 and launched two test satellites into orbit before it was acquired by ConsenSys in 2018. Another big name, AstroForge, raised $13 million in seed funding in 2022 before launching their first demonstration spacecraft in 2023. They’re planning their third mission to land on a metallic asteroid in 2025.
Recycling Gold on Earth
The race to mine asteroids is on, and maybe Garfield will have a refinery in space one day (woah). But for now, we’ll gladly stick to refining gold here on Earth. After all, we’ve been at it for 132 years!
We know that gold is rare in the universe. If all of the gold ever mined on Earth were melted down, it would only fill about three and a half Olympic-size swimming pools.
Since there’s such a finite amount of gold down here, it’s very important to recycle it – and same goes for other precious metals. And thankfully, precious metals like gold can be infinitely recycled without ever losing quality. On that note, if you have any precious metal scrap that you’d like to recycle for cash, we’re here to help!
Established in 1892, Garfield Refining has over a century of experience in refining precious metals. We serve various industries including dental offices, jewelers, pawnbrokers, individual sellers and more.Start your shipment today to cash in on your gold!