Scientists find answer to vast puzzle about the universe in the middle of two colliding stars

Scientists have found the answer to a decades-long mystery, in the middle of two colliding stars.

For the first ever time, a newly made heavy element called strontium was detected in space after two neutron stars crashed into each other.

The discovery definitively confirms that heavier elements in the universe can be made in the mergers of neutron stars, at last helping answer the puzzle of how chemical elements form.

Since the middle of the last century, researchers have understood how physical processes create the elements that make up the world around us. They went on to find the places in the universe where these are found – with the exception of one.