"That kilonova alone produced more than 100 Earths' worth of pure, solid precious metals, confirming that these explosions are fantastic at creating heavy elements. In short, the gold in your jewelry was forged from two neutron stars that collided long before the birth of the solar system."
Reporting like this reminds me of the recent report on facts about comets and the total number of comets documented today, < 3800 documented. However, the postulated Oort cloud could contain 10^11- to 10^13 comets
Looking for Au created in r-process events is not easy. Panning for Gold: New Emission Lines from UV-VIS Spectroscopy of Au I and Au II,
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ApJS..250...19B/abstract, September 2020. "The recent detection of a neutron star merger by the LIGO collaboration has renewed interest in laboratory studies of r-process elements. Accurate modeling and interpretation of the electromagnetic transients following the mergers requires computationally expensive calculations of both the structure and opacity of all trans-iron elements. To date, the necessary atomic data to benchmark structure codes are incomplete or, in some cases, absent entirely. Within the available laboratory studies, the literature on Au I and Au II provides incomplete reports of the emission lines and level structures..."
Constraints on the presence of platinum and gold in the spectra of the kilonova AT2017gfo,
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021MNRAS.506.3560G/abstract, September 2021. "...We compare our model spectra to the observed spectra of AT2017gfo, and conclude that no platinum or gold signatures are prominent in the ejecta. From our nebular phase modelling, we place tentative upper limits on the platinum and gold mass of ≲ a few 10^-3 M⊙, and ≲ 10^-2 M⊙, respectively. This work demonstrates how new atomic data of heavy elements can be included in radiative transfer calculations, and motivates future searches for elemental signatures."
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