LET’S GO GET THEM: New source of gold, platinum, and uranium discovered in space.

A flash of intense radiation seen in space has upended long-held ideas about how some of our heaviest metals emerge. Scientists have found that such a flare can pump out vast amounts of heavy, rare atoms in mere seconds, revealing a surprising origin for valuables like gold and platinum.

Brian Metzger from the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City is one of the researchers behind this magnetar flare discovery.

Metzger and his colleagues worked to show how these unusually powerful neutron star outbursts can forge precious metals, called called r-process elements, at unimaginable scales.

Magnetars are the universe’s most intense magnets, and they’re not just strong – they’re wildly extreme. Born from the explosive death of massive stars, these neutron stars pack more mass than our sun into a ball just a dozen miles wide.

Their magnetic fields are a thousand times stronger than typical neutron stars, and trillions of times beyond anything found on Earth.

If you stood anywhere near one (which, thankfully, you can’t), it could scramble your atoms just by existing. That’s how intense these cosmic beasts are.

On second thought, maybe we aren’t quite ready to go get them.