heaviest elements in the periodic table.” (See
excerpts from a Harvard University interview
of Berger in the online version of the release).
Leo Singer, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight
Center, and a collaborator with Kasliwal in the
GROWTH group adds, “Continued monitor-
ing over many subsequent nights at Gemini
allowed us to paint a stunning infrared por-
trait of neutron star mergers.” In agreement
with other researchers, the GROWTH team
concluded that these neutron-neutron star
mergers are primary sites for the production
of elements heavier than iron. According to
Kasliwal, “Each of these events is capable of
forging over ten thousand times the Earth’s
mass in heavy elements such as gold and
platinum — cosmic bling!”
Folding the Gemini data into observations
from radio to X-rays, Eleonora Troja, of the
University of Maryland, joined Berger in pre-
senting her findings at the D.C. press confer-
ence. Troja’s team focused on the time evolu-
tion of the event star