In the begining there is hydrogen the simplest element, with one electron and one proton. the hydrogen element floats about space as hydrogen gas h2.  Over time all this hydrogen gas clumps together and begins to have a gravitaional pull on other hydrogen atoms, gravity makes balls of hydrogen gas into bigger balls of hydrogn gas.  Once big enough gravity makes the hydrogen clouds dense. Figure 1 - Drivers This increase in pressure causes the hydrogen in the middle to heat up and eventualy ignite.  Fusion then occurs releasing lots of energy as light and creating helium with two protons and two electrons, this is the birth of the first star.  The star gets hotter and hotter and in its core creates more elements from hydrogen to Iron.  After a long time, five billion years, this star explodes in a super nova, this supernova creates such heat elements heavier than iron are created like gold, silver and copper.  The suernova explosion scatters all these elements in lumps as rocks (asteroids).  These lumps float around in space crashing into things, over time they crash into each other and a second generation star is formed, around some stars planets are also formed out of the clumps of material floating around space.  The star and its planets have gravity of their own and attract more lumps and get bigger.  Most of the lumps are the elements upto iron some of the lumps are the rest of the elements like copper gold and silver, but these are much rarer as these element are only created during the unusual supernova event.  The planets start off very hot even molten and melt all these rocks.  Some of the asteroids (rocks) contain water, all of the water on earth arrived here via asteroids in this fashion.  This is how the Sun and the Earth were formed and why gold is rare on the earth.  Gold was formed by earths ancestors, the suns thats exploded and cast the gold free in the universe.  Earth's ancestors were stars that exploded creating lumps of rock that floated around space and eventually crashed into each other forming the Earth.  The sun is a second or thrd or x generation star formed from the material of other stars.  actually I don't know if the sun has been around from the start, apparentyl it hasn't but I don't know how they know that.  14 billion years = start of universe, 10 billion years ago birth of Sun, five billion years ago birth of Earth. (need to verify these numbers)

You can tell the distance of stars from measuring their position in summer and winter skies.  the same technique your eyes use to allow you to percieve distance.

stars produce all the elements in their core all the time via fusion, but when elements of iron and heavier are involved in fusion it takes more energy to fuse iron than is released so these reactions allow gravity to win.  a star is in a constant battle between gravity trying to collapse the star and its explosions countering this implosion.  once gravity wins the battle the star collaspes and then explodes in a supanova. which is a very quick process, a matter of days.

So the gold that was there from when the earth formed all melted when the Earth was hot and molten and has all sunken to the core of the earth along with lots of iron.  All of the gold that man can access and mine, is held in the crust of the Earth, arrived via meteroites after the crust was formed and hardened.  This is thought to have occured 200 million years ago, but asteroids have been hitting the earth ever since it formed, but there was a big asteroid storm 200 million years ago appraantly.  It happend just before the dinasours arrived.  And all the gold ever mined came from these asteroids.  So the gold you have is an asteroid, that is why asteroids are not worth all that much, everything is an asteroid really, it is just a matter of how long ago did your asteroid arrive.  we are all formed from stardust.  We are all formed from rocks? yes all the carbon that makes up our bodies arrived here in a rock.  The carbon was created in a star, which exploded and whose fragment travelled as asteroids and formed the Earth.  Water and light hit the rocks and life formed.  we evloved as life forms via evolution and we are made of water and carbon, from the earth ultimatley.

It turns out not all stars make all the elements, the sun only fuses hydrogen into helium and apprantly does not create any heavier elements, but there are other elements in the Sun, you can see it in the light the Sun emits, the sodium lines for instance.  So the heavy elements are only created during the supernova process which is only a few days in length.  It is only during this short time during the end of a stars life that all of the heavy elements are created, but so what, if they were created at the begining of a stars life, they are only distributed when the star explodes.  The heavy elements are created at the last minute then cast into space by the explosion of the star as lumps or rock we call asteroids.  Most asteroids are made of iron or rock, only a few contain the precious heavy metals created during the stars explosion.  The size of some of these stars is enormous, Beatlejucie is as big as a million Suns apparently all the space from the Sun to Neptune is the size of the red giant Beetlejuice.  When a star does supernova there are lots of rocks created and cast into space as floating asteroids traveling at thousands of miles per hour.  Wow! The whole story is mind blowing.