[cabinpark]

This is actually my PhD research! Yes the current thought is that neutron star mergers are the source of heavy elements (iron and greater) over supernova. Looking at the elements produced by nucleosynthesis from the outflow yields very positive results when compared with abundance curves in our solar system.

Also because we know how much material is released in a mrger and how much material there is in our galaxy, we can work out how frequent neutron star mergers are and these results agree with other independent estimates of frequency of merger.