Starquakes Forge Planets' Worth of Gold, Physicists Reveal

Giant flares blasted out of supermagnetized stars called "magnetars" could forge planets' worth of gold and other heavy elements such as platinum and uranium.

This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers led from New York's Columbia University, which reveals a new birthplace for some of the universe's rarest elements.

As a type of neutron star, magnetars typically form when sufficiently massive stars go supernova—but they are distinguished by having magnetic fields around a trillion times stronger than the one that surrounds the Earth.

While rare events, magnetars can expel vast amounts of high-energy radiation when they undergo "starquakes" and suffer fractures in their crusts.

The team's analysis suggests that, when magnetars release giant flares, they also create unstable heavy radioactive nuclei, which then decay down into elements such as gold.

"It's pretty incredible to think that some of the heavy elements all around us—like the precious metals in our phones and computers—are produced in these crazy extreme environments," said paper author and physicist Anirudh Patel in a statement.

While hydrogen, helium and a small amount of lithium were formed as a result of the Big Bang, almost all of the rest of the periodic table of elements owe their existence to being manufactured via either the life or death of stars.

The heavy elements are formed by the so-called rapid neutron capture "r-process," which calls for an abundance of free neutrons—a situation that can occur only in extreme environments.

The only previous example of an r-process site that has been confirmed observationally, however, is in the collision between two neutron stars—as recorded by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories back in 2017.

As their name implies, neutron stars are made up of a soup of neutrons (albeit one so dense you wouldn't be remotely able to lift a spoon of it, as it would weigh in at more than a billion tons)— their sheer gravity forcing protons and electrons to combine into neutrons.

However, neutron star mergers are rare events, meaning that they cannot possibly account alone for all the heavy elements, produced by the r-process, that we see today.

The new study, however, confirms another r-process site—one that could be responsible for forging as much as 10 percent of the Milky Way's heavy elements.

"We can't exclude that there could be third or fourth sites out there that we just haven't seen yet," said paper co-author and Columbia University physicist Professor Brian Metzger in a statement.

The new research resolves a two-decade-long enigma relating to a bright flash that was observed coming from the magnetar SGR 1806-20—which lies some 42,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius—back in late 2004.

Lasting but mere seconds, the powerful flare nevertheless released more energy than our sun does in a million years. While the flare was well understood, a second, weaker signal that peaked some 10 minutes later provided an enduring mystery.

In their study, Patel and colleagues analyzed the flares using two NASA missions: Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) and the Wind satellite.

The team revealed that the previously unexplained second signal actually reflected the birth by the star of various heavy elements including gold and platinum.

In fact, the team has calculated that the 2004 flare alone produced the equivalent of a third of the Earth's mass—or 27 lunar masses—in such rare elements.

"This is really just the second time we've ever directly seen proof of where these elements form," added Metzger.

"It's a substantial leap in our understanding of heavy elements production."

Further observations of magnetar flares and neutron star mergers will be needed to better understand how heavy elements are synthesized—and confirm other potential r-process sites.

In a recent study, for example, found that powerful jets thundering out of dying stars may "dissolve" the stars' outer layers, producing enough free neutrons for the r-process.

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Reference

Patel, A., Metzger, B. D., Cehula, J., Burns, E., Goldberg, J. A., & Thompson, T. A. (2025). Direct Evidence for r-process Nucleosynthesis in Delayed MeV Emission from the SGR 1806—20 Magnetar Giant Flare. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 984(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adc9b0