A journal Nature article uncovered the ancient stellar collision that granted the cache of precious gold and platinum to our solar system.

Two astronomers made the discovery by analyzing the leftovers of radioactive isotopes, or versions of molecules with different numbers of neutrons, in a very old meteorite, then compared those with isotope ratios generated by a computer simulation of neutron star mergers.

"The meteor contained the remnant of radioactive isotopes produced by neutron star mergers. While they decayed a long time ago, they could be used to reconstruct the amount of the original radioactive isotope at the time when the solar system was formed,” Bartos told Live Science in an email.

Researchers realized that a single neutron star collision from 100 million years ago may have created elements heavier than iron, which has 26 protons.

"In each of us, we would find an eyelash-worth of these elements, mostly in the form of iodine, which is essential to life," lead study author and an astrophysicist at the University of Florida, Imre Bartos, said in a statement.

“About 10 milligrams [0.00035 ounces] of [the gold or platinum wedding ring you are wearing] likely formed 4.6 billion years ago,” Bartos noted.

Rapid neutron capture process, in which an atomic nucleus quickly clings to free neutrons before the nucleus has time to radioactively decay, forms elements like plutonium, gold, platinum and others heavier than iron.

The meteorite in question contained decayed isotopes of plutonium, uranium and curium atoms, which the authors of a 2016 study in the journal Science Advances used to estimate the amounts of these elements present in the early solar system. Bartos and Marka plugged those values into a computer model to figure out how many neutron star mergers it would take to fill the solar system with the correct amounts of those elements.