Impressive calculation supporting the r-process to explain elements found on Earth today using the solar nebula. I note from the article, "When neutron stars merge, they spew a wealth of short-lived elements into their surroundings, and these materials become part of later-forming solar systems. Now scientists are trying to close in on the merger that seeded our solar system by tracing the elements produced by the original decaying material. From that work, they believe the responsible merger occurred 100 million years before and 1,000 light-years away from the birth of our solar system. "It was close," the project's lead scientist, Szabolcs Marka, who is a physicist at Columbia University, told Space.com. "If you look up at the sky and you see a neutron-star merger 1,000 light-years away, it would outshine the entire night sky."
The calculated age for the neutron stars merger suggest it took place about 4.7 billion years ago, the precise location of the merger is not known because the location of the solar nebula or proto-sun at that time is not known in the Milky Way as the report indicates. However, the model does use an assumed mass for the solar nebula to explain the r-process elements, using meteorite studies too. Today we have a variety of stars documented with dust disks around them, many in the mass range of 1-3 earth masses, some quite large, more than 40,000 earth masses, quite a variety it appears. Is there spectra evidence for neutron star merger elements in those disks and gas like gold and uranium? For example, DH Tau system with DH Tau b, FU Orionis disk < =22 earth masses. There are *baby stars* forming documented in Orion nebula with <=26 earth masses.
The report provides an interesting, r-process calculation for our solar system to explain gold on Earth as an example.