Absolutely all the deposits of gold, uranium and other heavy metals on Earth could appear not inside supernovae, as was previously thought, but thanks to the so-called primordial black holes at the dawn of the Universe. This is stated in an article published in the last issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

After the Big Bang in the universe, there were only three elements - hydrogen, helium and lithium. However, 300 million years later, when the first stars appeared, heavier elements, born during thermonuclear reactions in the bowels of the stars, began to appear.

"Today, scientists believe that all elements heavier than iron, including gold, uranium, and other heavy and rare-earth metals, arose in most cases as a result of supernova explosions, since the temperature and pressure inside the stars are too low for their rapid formation," - says Alexander Kusenko from the University of California in Los Angeles (USA).

On the other hand, recent attempts to estimate the amount of gold and other heavy elements generated by supernovae indicate that the latter form these substances extremely slowly. This suggests that other, more exotic processes could be involved in their birth, such as collisions of neutron stars.

In addition, this hypothesis well explains why there are unusually few neutron stars in the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies. Such collisions can give rise to several other mysterious and yet unexplained astrophysical phenomena, such as FRB-radio flares and mysterious gamma radiation emanating from the core of the Galaxy. This was reported by Vesti. md.