James Webb telescope spots ultra-rare cosmic explosion that could reveal the origin of the universe’s heaviest elements

Using an incredibly bright gamma-ray as a guide, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected the heavy element tellurium around the site of a stellar-corpse collision. The discovery brings scientists a step closer to understanding where the universe’s heaviest elements come from.

While scientists know that elements lighter than iron are forged in the hearts of massive stars, even the most massive stellar bodies aren’t capable of generating hot and dense enough conditions at their cores to forge heavier elements such as gold, platinum or tellurium.