Then I learned about synthetic elements and my mind was officially blown. Previously my understanding was that elements were natural and all the things we had or made came from combining or recombining them through one process or another. That an element could be created was horizon expanding and left me a little in awe of my fellow homo sapiens who had accomplished such a feat.
Even later in my scientific education did I come to realize that all the elements that we have did not just appear with the Big Bang (which is more a commentary on the kind of student I was than anything about my instructors) but were themselves the products of various natural processes present in the universe that made new thing out of the old.
Researchers have recently announced that one process, one kind of event between stars, can account for all of the gold present in the universe as well as much of the other heavy elements like lead, platinum, and uranium. Neutron stars collide about once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in our galaxy and those collisions create that yellow metal we value so much. An info-graphic, created by those preeminent gold top dollar pawn brokers, breaks down the process.
If we start with the overused Carl Sagan line about each of us being made of stardust we could say that marriage is symbolized by the creative energy of the crashing together of two burned out stars. I can't help taking off the wedding ring, holding it, and leaning back with no small measure of awe at how it came to be.
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