As massive stars collapse into black holes, powerful jets tearing out from their hearts may "dissolve" the stars' outer layers, providing the ingredients to make heavy elements. This is the conclusion ...

A brilliant flash from deep space once baffled scientists. But now, that mystery has been solved—and it reshapes what we know about the universe’s heaviest elements. Back in December 2004, a massive ...

A team of astronomers has reconstructed the 12-billion-year evolutionary history of a giant spiral galaxy, marking a major ...

All around us are elements forged in stars, from the nickel and copper in coins to the gold and silver in jewelry. Scientists have a good understanding of how these elements form: In many cases, a ...

Galaxies “waste” large amounts of heavy elements generated by star formation by ejecting them up to a million light years away into their surrounding halos and deep space, according to a new study led ...

By reading the chemical “fingerprints” of a distant galaxy, astronomers reconstructed its 12-billion-year evolution. This new ...

For years, astronomers puzzled over the mystery of where the heaviest elements in the universe—like gold, uranium, and platinum—come from. Scientists understood that these elements had to form under ...

Still in its original galaxy, a rare holdout from the second generation of stars sheds new light on the origins of the ...

The formation of small worlds like Earth previously was thought to occur mostly around stars rich in heavy elements such as iron and silicon. However, new ground-based observations, combined with data ...

In a new study, astronomers report novel evidence regarding the limits of planet formation, finding that after a certain point, planets larger than Earth have difficulty forming near low-metallicity ...

An international team led by scientists of GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz, succeeded in determining the chemical properties of the ...