Through the 20 century, physicists came to understand that many familiar chemical elements were either created in the Big Bang (particularly hydrogen and helium), or cooked up through nuclear reactions in
the cores of stars (carbon, oxygen, iron etc.). However, the origin of most of the heavier chemical elements in the universe, such as gold, platinum and uranium, remained a mystery.  Only in recent years have teams of  modern-day gold prospectors shown that these elements are created in the violent explosions triggered by the collisions of incredibly dense neutron-stars. Since these collisions are also loud sources of gravitational waves, and launch jets of plasma moving at nearly the speed of light, they represent a unique laboratory for the most extreme physical processes

Professor Nial Tanvir, FRS