Study links plutonium-244 in deep-sea crust to kilonova Nature Astronomy
Turns out, some of Earth's deep-sea crust holds a cosmic secret: scientists just found traces of plutonium-244, a rare radioactive material believed to have arrived from a kilonova (that's when two neutron stars smash together) over 100 million years ago.
This discovery, published in Nature Astronomy, gives us fresh clues about how heavy elements like plutonium and uranium are made during these wild space explosions.
Pacific crust sample lacks curium-247
Researchers dug into an ocean crust sample collected in 1976 from a depth of 4,830 meters in the Pacific.
Using advanced tech, they spotted hundreds of plutonium-244 atoms per kilogram but no curium-247, which means this stardust is seriously ancient.
The even spread of the isotope points to ongoing debris from distant neutron star mergers, connecting cosmic events directly to Earth's geological history, and helping explain where our heaviest elements actually come from.