I just found out from watching this video that I haven't been keeping myself completely up to date on the theory of how most of the elements heavier that iron on Earth mainly come from.
It was for a long time thought they mostly came from supernovae and I thought that was still the general scientific consensus but, no, that has now changed because, at this video explains, calculations and observations show this cannot be true. Instead, the evidence now points to neutron star merger as being a far more likely source of most of the mass of those heavier elements; As two neutron stars merger, it is now thought they spit out a huge number of nuclei fragments that become the heavier elements and this is mostly where the heavier elements come from although much smaller amounts still come from supernovae.
Just wondering;
As two neutron stars merger, as they spit out a huge number of nuclei fragments that become the heavier elements, is there some currently astronomically feasible way of detecting that process of throwing out of heavier elements thus confirm this astronomical theory?
It would also be nice if there was some way of accurately measuring both the absolute amount and the relative proportion of each kind of heavier element spat out by the process.