(Image source: International Business Times)

BY GARY COTTON

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Gold falling from the sky? It may seem like a fantasy, but a new discovery by scientists is saying that might have actually happened. Here's the IB Times.

“Scientists revealed today that the entire world’s gold and platinum -- from King Tut’s tomb to your mother’s earrings -- came from outer space after a huge meteor shower pounded earth nearly 4 billion years ago.”

But doesn’t some gold come from the earth? CNN explained the theory saying why Earth’s natural gold never made it to the surface.

NATALIE ALLEN: “They say that’s because when the earth formed, all the gold that existed at that time would have sunk to the planet’s core when it cooled.”
MATTHIAS WILLBOLD: “We’ve lost all the gold early in the Earth’s history into the core so the accessible earth was completely void of any precious metals. The metals that we have today were added to the earth.”  

A writer for BBC says the idea of precious metals coming from a meteor shower was proposed by scientists before. But this is the first time they were able to prove it -- by measuring different versions, or isotopes, of the element tungsten.

“The team have looked at the proportions of the different isotopes in modern rocks and in the most ancient rocks in Greenland. They found a small but significant difference in the proportions, indicating that the modern rocks had received a dose of tungsten, and therefore also gold, from meteorites.”

Finally,a writer for I09 says the discovery helps put our planet’s history into context.

“So then, it wasn't just gold that people spent lifetimes chasing after - it was space gold. It's also an interesting reminder of how Earth is never truly isolated from the rest of the universe. Of course, that idea is hardly in dispute -- it's looking increasingly likely that asteroids also brought water and the building blocks of life to Earth...”



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