What is gold made from?

Gold is a naturally occurring element on the periodic table and cannot be manufactured or made from other elements except through nuclear reactions. Gold is created when a star explodes to become a supernova or neutron stars collide, and some gold was carried to Earth by meteors.

The extremely high energy of supernovae and neutron star collisions produces other elements heavier than iron, including platinum and uranium. Because of the rarity of such explosions and collisions, the amount of gold present in the universe is much lower than that of more easily created elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and silicon.