{"id":212773,"date":"2025-04-29T14:03:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/flares-from-magnetized-stars-can-forge-planets-worth-of-gold"},"modified":"2025-04-29T14:03:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:03:35","slug":"flares-from-magnetized-stars-can-forge-planets-worth-of-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/flares-from-magnetized-stars-can-forge-planets-worth-of-gold","title":{"rendered":"Flares from magnetized stars can forge planets\u2019 worth of gold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/flares-from-magnetized-stars-can-forge-planets-worth-of-gold.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have discovered a previously unknown birthplace of some of the universe\u2019s rarest elements: a giant flare unleashed by a supermagnetized star. The astronomers calculated that such flares could be responsible for forging up to 10% of our galaxy\u2019s gold, platinum and other heavy elements.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery also resolves a decades-long mystery concerning a bright flash of light and particles <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature03525\" target=\"_blank\">spotted by a space telescope<\/a> in December 2004. The light came from a magnetar\u2014a type of star wrapped in magnetic fields trillions of times as strong as Earth\u2019s\u2014that had unleashed a giant <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/flare\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">flare<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The powerful blast of radiation only lasted a few seconds, but it released more energy than the sun does in 1 million years. While the flare\u2019s origin was quickly identified, a second, smaller signal from the star, peaking 10 minutes later, confounded scientists at the time. For 20 years, that signal went unexplained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have discovered a previously unknown birthplace of some of the universe\u2019s rarest elements: a giant flare unleashed by a supermagnetized star. The astronomers calculated that such flares could be responsible for forging up to 10% of our galaxy\u2019s gold, platinum and other heavy elements. The discovery also resolves a decades-long mystery concerning a bright [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}