These results offer a new possibility for clarifying six decades of uncertainty over the site of origin of r -process nuclei. Confirming relevance to the r -process is that it is radiogenic power from radioactive decay of r -process nuclei that maintains the visibility of these spun off r -process fragments. Otherwise they would dim quickly. Such alternative sites were first seriously proposed in 1974 as decompressing neutron star matter. It was proposed such matter is ejected from neutron stars merging with black holes in compact binaries. In 1989 (and 1999) this scenario was extended to binary neutron star mergers (a binary star system of two neutron stars that collide). After preliminary identification of these sites, the scenario was confirmed in GW170817. Current astrophysical models suggest that a single neutron star merger event may have generated between 3 and 13 Earth masses of gold.