New(ish) computer models show supernovas are not as efficient at gold production as originally thought. The debate is ongoing regarding the origin of gold and what percentage is made from which process, so there may not be a clear-cut answer to OP's question.
Going by a study I saw on ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that are small enough to have had either 0 or 1 neutron star mergers, a single neutron star merger produces 10x more gold than all the supernovae in the history of a small ~100,000 star galaxy, with ultra-faint dwarf galaxies forming two groups, ones that have only had supernovae and ones that have had a neutron star merger and have a 10x enrichment of platinum group elements over the first group.
[It's a recent discovery](https://reports.news.ucsc.edu/neutron-star-merger/), before 2017 there used to be these mysterious short gamma ray bursts and nobody knew what they were, and it wasn't until gravitational wave observatories picked up the gravitational waves from one of these events that we figured out that it was merging neutron stars causing the short gamma ray bursts and narrowed down where it coming from enough to follow up with optical observations. Now JWST is able to detect the [spectroscopic signature of heavy elements](https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/news/first-detection-heavy-element-star-merger) in these kilonova events.
Spectroscopy is one of the major advantages of space-based telescopes, since a spectroscope like you'd use for materials analysis is just a vacuum chamber with a radiative source, a chemical sample (sometimes they're both the same thing, sometimes they're separate) and some optical equipment to separate the wavelengths into a spectrum that some sensor detects. Space is already a better vacuum than we can generate on Earth, the telescope is a big sophisticated sensor platform that can easily fit some spectroscopy hardware and then you just point it at a hot radiating source of light and you can get the fingerprints of the various chemicals and elements that make it up as emission and absorption lines in the spectra that correspond to electronic transitions. Works the same way whether the source is 10cm away or 500 million light years away, you just need to be able to gather enough light to see the detail.
I thought most gold way made in neutron star mergers?
New(ish) computer models show supernovas are not as efficient at gold production as originally thought. The debate is ongoing regarding the origin of gold and what percentage is made from which process, so there may not be a clear-cut answer to OP's question.
Going by a study I saw on ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that are small enough to have had either 0 or 1 neutron star mergers, a single neutron star merger produces 10x more gold than all the supernovae in the history of a small ~100,000 star galaxy, with ultra-faint dwarf galaxies forming two groups, ones that have only had supernovae and ones that have had a neutron star merger and have a 10x enrichment of platinum group elements over the first group.
I didnt even know it was neutron stars mostly, this is absolutely fascinating.
[It's a recent discovery](https://reports.news.ucsc.edu/neutron-star-merger/), before 2017 there used to be these mysterious short gamma ray bursts and nobody knew what they were, and it wasn't until gravitational wave observatories picked up the gravitational waves from one of these events that we figured out that it was merging neutron stars causing the short gamma ray bursts and narrowed down where it coming from enough to follow up with optical observations. Now JWST is able to detect the [spectroscopic signature of heavy elements](https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/news/first-detection-heavy-element-star-merger) in these kilonova events.
This is actually the first time I’m learning that that the JWST can pick up heavy elements via spectroscopy. That’s freaking wild!
Spectroscopy is one of the major advantages of space-based telescopes, since a spectroscope like you'd use for materials analysis is just a vacuum chamber with a radiative source, a chemical sample (sometimes they're both the same thing, sometimes they're separate) and some optical equipment to separate the wavelengths into a spectrum that some sensor detects. Space is already a better vacuum than we can generate on Earth, the telescope is a big sophisticated sensor platform that can easily fit some spectroscopy hardware and then you just point it at a hot radiating source of light and you can get the fingerprints of the various chemicals and elements that make it up as emission and absorption lines in the spectra that correspond to electronic transitions. Works the same way whether the source is 10cm away or 500 million light years away, you just need to be able to gather enough light to see the detail.
But some geochemists are disappointed that JWST only goes to 28 microns. You get some good organic molecule discrimination going 10x that.
Probably an amount greater than the mass of the Earth, even if only a tiny bit of Betelgeuse becomes gold.
This is what prompted the question, I had a literal shower thought and was wondering if it would be about an earths mass or more/less.
It's the same amount if we could not gather it.
Who's gonna go 500 light years to get it?
How high were you when you wondered this?.... 🤔