how is gold made

Why normal stars can’t make gold

Stars make elements through fusion:

But iron is the limit.
Making elements heavier than iron doesn’t release energy — it requires energy. So stars stop there.

Gold (atomic number 79) is far heavier than iron (26).

Gold forms through something called the rapid neutron capture process (the r-process):

A huge number of free neutrons are released.
Atomic nuclei rapidly absorb these neutrons.
They become extremely heavy and unstable.
They radioactively decay into stable heavy elements like:
- Gold
- Platinum
- Uranium

This requires:

Only a few events in the universe can do this.

When two neutron stars crash into each other:

In 2017, scientists observed this happening (GW170817). The data showed that a single collision made more gold than the mass of Earth.

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