CASTalks - Gold's Elusive Cosmic Origin

Join CAS for their last CASTalks of 2025! We have a perennial favorite for our talk, Dr. Adam Rengstorf of Purdue Northwest. Dr. Rengstorf is the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering & Sciences. Dr. Rengstorf will talk about the sources of heavy elements...

Once upon a time, the universe was mostly hydrogen and helium—basically cosmic baby food. Then stars got greedy, cooking up heavier elements in their fiery cores until they exploded in spectacular supernovas, flinging carbon, oxygen, and iron across space like confetti at a galactic party. But the real showstoppers are neutron star mergers: when two ultra-dense stellar corpses slam together, they forge gold, platinum, and other precious metals in a titanic flash—literally alchemy on a cosmic scale. Every atom of silver in your jewelry and every bit of iodine in your body is stardust, gifted to Earth by stellar catastrophes.

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