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The tyrannosaur of the minerals, this gold nugget in quartz weighs more than 70 ounces (2 kilograms).
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet
Earthquakes have the Midas touch, a new study claims.
Water in faults vaporizes during an earthquake, depositing gold, according to a model published in the March 17 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The model provides a quantitative mechanism for the link between gold and quartz seen in many of the world's gold deposits, said Dion Weatherley, a geophysicist at the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study.
When an earthquake strikes, it moves along a rupture in the ground — a fracture called a fault. Big faults can have many small fractures along their length, connected by jogs that appear as rectangular voids. Water often lubricates faults, filling in fractures and jogs.
About 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface, under incredible temperatures and pressures, the water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silica and economically attractive elements like gold.
Shake, rattle and gold
During an earthquake, the fault jog suddenly opens wider. It's like pulling the lid off a pressure cooker: The water inside the void instantly vaporizes, flashing to steam and forcing silica, which forms the mineral quartz, and gold out of the fluids and onto nearby surfaces, suggest Weatherley and co-author Richard Henley, of the Australian National University in Canberra.
While scientists have long suspected that sudden pressure drops could account for the link between giant gold deposits and ancient faults, the study takes this idea to the extreme, said Jamie Wilkinson, a geochemist at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study.
"To me, it seems pretty plausible. It's something that people would probably want to model either experimentally or numerically in a bit more detail to see if it would actually work," Wilkinson told OurAmazingPlanet.
Previously, scientists suspected fluids would effervesce, bubbling like an opened soda bottle, during earthquakes or other pressure changes. This would line underground pockets with gold. Others suggested minerals would simply accumulate slowly over time.
Weatherley said the amount of gold left behind after an earthquake is tiny, because underground fluids carry at most only one part per million of the precious element. But an earthquake zone like New Zealand's Alpine Fault, one of the world's fastest, could build a mineable deposit in 100,000 years, he said.
Surprisingly, the quartz doesn't even have time to crystallize, the study indicates. Instead, the mineral comes out of the fluid in the form of nanoparticles, perhaps even making a gel-like substance on the fracture walls. The quartz nanoparticles then crystallize over time. [Gold Quiz: From Nuggets to Flecks]
Even earthquakes smaller than magnitude 4.0, which may rattle nerves but rarely cause damage, can trigger flash vaporization, the study finds.
"Given that small-magnitude earthquakes are exceptionally frequent in fault systems, this process may be the primary driver for the formation of economic gold deposits," Weatherley told OurAmazingPlanet.
The hills have gold
Quartz-linked gold has sourced some famous deposits, such as the placer gold that sparked the 19th-century California and Klondike gold rushes. Both deposits had eroded from quartz veins upstream. Placer gold consists of particles, flakes and nuggets mixed in with sand and gravel in stream and river beds. Prospectors traced the gravels back to their sources, where hard-rock mining continues today.
But earthquakes aren't the only cataclysmic source of gold. Volcanoes and their underground plumbing are just as prolific, if not more so, at producing the precious metal. While Weatherley and Henley suggest that a similar process could take place under volcanoes, Wilkinson, who studies volcano-linked gold, said that's not the case.
"Beneath volcanoes, most of the gold is not precipitated in faults that are active during earthquakes," Wilkinson said. "It's a very different mechanism."
Understanding how gold forms helps companies prospect for new mines. "This new knowledge on gold-deposit formation mechanisms may assist future gold exploration efforts," Weatherley said.
In their quest for gold, humans have pulled more than 188,000 tons (171,000 metric tons) of the metal from the ground, exhausting easily accessed sources, according to the World Gold Council, an industry group.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
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Leave a Comment:
Sure, let the mining companies dig all they want along these fault lines. You think drilling for gas and oil with down-hole fracturing causes problems now? Wait until some mining consortium decides to excavate the entire San Andreas fault.
Lets see .... gold mining has been going on for what .... 9,000 years or so? On faults, off faults and in between I am sure. Who says gas and oil fracking is causing problems? local residents? scientists? grandstanding politicians? eco-nuts? Coal mining causes problems, iron mining causes problems, every activity of humankind causes problems, the REAL problem is too many people not what people do to improve life or make civilization possible.
Dennis: Finally a source of reason....Too many people is the TRUE CAUSE of most of humankind's problems
I would argue against that Stunned, we live in a universe that possess countless billion trillion tons of every element known to man.
What I am saying is that even just in our solar system, there is more elemental oxygen than mankind has ever breathed, more nitrogen/carbon/oxygen etc... for the richest of topsoil's than mankind has ever tilled.
We are living in nearly endless sea of resources, and to our knowledge are the only species that can harvest them. There is no such thing as too many people. There is no need to kill children and old men. There is plenty for everyone.
We should strive to limit population growth on earth until we have an economical way to get off of it!
For Stunned and NoLiberty. The main issue you run into is with regards to easily accessible resources. There is a virtually unlimited supply of resources present, but getting to some of them would be extraordinarily difficult. Mining asteroids or other planets for example would be extremely difficult with today's technology. So, the limiting factor isn't really the number of people, it's our unwillingness to put more money into research that allows the development of new technologies.
NoLiberty wrote:
Old women, on the other hand....
wonderboy....
people will F---
They will have kids
Not much is going to change that
(Well to be honest I am gay so I don't plan to grow the population...not for lack of trying though)
Anyone heard about any
SINK-HOLES Lately??
98% of everything you own or use on a day to day basis comes from some sort of mining. Earth first will mine other planets later.
It's gold Jerry, gold...
maybe we could get lucky and it would trigger "THE BIG ONE" causing California to sink!
Hello you moron, please provide one example of any person that has had "any" problem brought about by Frac drilling? There is no one person as there is not one person hurt by global warming. I learned this fact from watching Al Gores cable network he sold to big oil.
1. How about the people that can light the water from their faucet on fire?
1. How about the people struck by hurricane Sandy?
And I'm certain that you didn't see your "facts" on Current TV.
It just blows my mind at how greedy we are a 188000 tons of gold and we still need more. Before someone pops off about the uses of gold I am very aware that it has other uses like computers other than tacky jewelry
@NoLiberty: "There is no need to kill children and old men." Fine, but what about old women, do we need to kill them?
@Richardharrow: People who can "light their water on fire" were able to do so before Fracking. Hurricanes have been occurring since the beginning of time.
Yeah, evacuating Jersey and New York is commonplace. /s/ Give me proof that they could light it on fire before fracking. Climate change is real. Open your eyes.
David
You asked for one example....here you go
http://americablog.com/2013/01/ohio-bathroom-water-catches-on-fire-fracking.html
Asked and answered
FYI I own stock in Spectra Energy (Nat Gas) as well as several other energy companies inc Connoco (Phillips), Total and one other as well as Halliburton and a number of utilities SCEG, Duke, Edison Intl...but even I am willing to admit there are problems with Nat Gas drilling.
This is a ridiculous headline. No water is being turned into gold. The gold is simply coming out of solution in the water.
Agreed - This is one of the more ridiculous, misleading headlines I have seen on this site. I opened the link expecting to find some nonsensical alchemy-like claims and instead found a rather reasonable and scientifically valid explanation for why gold deposits are found in certain locations.
The headline is not "ridiculous" when one considers that mineral rich water is still "water."
In that context, the headline is accurate.
From a journalistic point, the headline certainly attracted your attention, the very purpose of a headline.
Agree with Mark. Yes the headline is misleading from a scientific perspective, but it's snazzy and gets your attention. That's often as important a what's in the article because if it's a boring headline, no one reads it. You'd be surprised at how much thought goes into acronyms or the name of something in a scientific meeting. Boring acronyms or titles that don't get someone's attention are often thrown in the pile of things that don't get funded when sent to a review board.
.
There not say water is turned into gold. The heat and the pressure that occures during an eathquake is were the process starts. If you do some research on mineral deposits around the country you will see that the gold vanes run north and south like in California as the earth moves from the west being pushed up. this explains why the mountains in Cali. run north and south. In Nevada, you have you have alot of geothermal activity lots of hot springs, water actualy collects gold and is forced up by pressure.
My water IS golden, especially in the morning!
Shaking -it
Gives vibrations
Like earth-quakes
does it not.
You have to be a complete and utter idiot to have read this headline and thought they literally meant water to gold. Or lacking any education higher than 2nd grade.
So just to make sure I understand your priorities:
It's OK if a headline is misleading, so long as it's snazzy and gets your attention?
That's not OK.
Actually, you can turn water into gold. By adding enough heat, hydrogen, and pressure (and I'm talking a @!$%# ton of this stuff) you can cause transmutation. Transmutation is, in short, smashing the protons, neutrons, and electrons together to form a new atom. Swith some math we can see what we would need:
Hydrogen (X2): 1 electron; 1 proton; 0 neutrons
Oxygen: 8 electrons; 8 protons; 8 neutrons
-----
Water totals: 9 electrons; 9 protons; 8 neutrons
-----
Gold: 79 electrons; 79 protons; 118 neutrons
-----
I did some math (do it yourself if you dont believe me) and found the lcm of these numbers to be 335592.
This gives us ~4247 gold atoms needed, and ~41949 water molecules needed for a maximum-efficiency transmutation. You would still have ~6063 hydrogen atoms left over, as well as some left over neutrons. These materials would probably form new atoms. I'm a tad too lazy to calculate the other variables i discussed earlier, if someone would do that for me I would love them forever.
Sources: Student at U of Florida, going for a bachlors in chemistry
kid,
Latest theories say you pretty much need to collide a couple neutron stars. Not the kind of thing you can do in a lab environment or your garage. Can't blame you for wanting to try though, people have been trying to figure it out for a very, very long time.
Mark VanGelder-1693883
From a "journalistic" standpoint these types of ridiculous headlines are the stuff of tabloids. Not that I'd expect more from NBC of course.
And yet you keep returning to the NBC articles and forums over and over and over again. Is that because someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to? Or is it because while you pretend to be high brow, you find that the NBC 'tabloid' news articles are the most stimulating?
Chris from Yucaipa
Actually I primarily enjoy reading the posts from wackos living in places like Yucaipa. And no, comedy does not "stimulate" me it entertains me. Only a fool would come to NBC for "stimulation" which is of course what makes the posts following many articles so humerous and enjoyable.
Oh and so sorry for offending you by insulting what must be your primary source of "information". Didn't mean to rain on your "low-brow" parade.
Are you a Quirk, a Quack or a Quark?
Via duct
But - WHY a duck????? Splain it to me.
Mineral rich water isn't only water. It's water. With minerals in it. If you evaporate the water, you haven't turned the water into minerals. You're removed the water from the minerals.
If I evaporate a bowl of sea water, don't you think it sounds ridiculous to say I "turned water into salt?"
Thank you for helping me b*tch slap him.
Great retort.
The scientific illiteracy of our fellow Americans is embarrassing.
Gold, never saw the reason for it being worth so much. There are plenty of rare materials, why gold? Because its shiny and pretty when polished up?? As far as metals go, its rather useless because its so soft. Cant even use it for jewelry without adding other metals to harden it.
To me, stuff you can actually use is worth more than any gold is. Like food, fuel, building materials, etc. You cant eat gold bars. Maybe you can use it to solder your broken radio, but that's about it.
It makes good jewerly because it doesn't react with anything naturally, i.e. tarnish.
It is one of the best electrical conductors, CRUCIAL for today's large memory computers, like the one you typed your comment with
It reflects infra-red light, i.e. heat, making it a fantastic heat shield for spacecraft.
Carbon is pretty worthless also, unless combined with other elements....i.e. the food, fuel and building materials you wrote about
Good points Stunned. Additionally it's extremely malleable. That and the lack of tarnish are the main reasons it was used very early on for jewelery and other ornaments.
US $100 bills are just cloth. You have to ask yourself, why is cloth worth so much?
The computer you are using, like most electronics, is full of gold in the circuit boards, it is one of the best electrical conductors on earth. Without it, you would not have a computer to post your message on this board.
We wouldn't have a lot of our electronic toys today if we didn't have gold. We use something like 320 tons annually in electronic equipment. It's an amazingly large amount. And the amount of silver similarly used is about 7500 tons. Just these two metals are worth about $24-25 billion annually.
Gold is recylced from junked electronics. Lots of dangerous stuff in there too. Large quanties of electronic junk are exported to third world and developing nations where very crude and hazardous methods are used for recycling. The stuff is considered hazardous waste and isn't supposed to be landfilled. There has been talk of banning these exports. Using very crude methods, the people doing this are often poisoned in the process and the the captured gold gets sold and reused. Likewise crude methods only recover about 50%. Whereas high tech methods can get almost 95%.
Some recycling does occur in the US but it is expensive to do it safely. They don't just go after the gold either, as there a a variety of heavy metals that can be recovered. Gold and some of these other metal are worth a lot of money and that is the only thing that makes it attractive. For quite a while though it made sense to export all this junk, don't think about how they recover it, and then buy it back. The value of gold in a desk top computer is about $9. The average cell phone has about $1.60 worth. It adds up if you have boat loads of this stuff.
Gold and some other rare elements are not in "limitless" supply as some suggest. It is only common sense that we try to recycle this stuff because over time we could eventually run out. I have seen some different estimates, but most put all the gold ever mined since the beginning of civilization only being about 10 billion ounces. They say it could all fit in a cube with 82' sides. Not that big a volume when you think about it. Current worldwide gold production annually is worth about $78 billion. Around 50 million toy ounces or about 3.4 million pounds. You could just about fit the annual production in you living room, as it would make a cube with 14' sides. We use about 20% of what is produced annually, in electronics. Another interesting way to look at it that every bit of gold every produced is worth just under $16 trillion at today's prices. That is just about equal to the US GDP in 2012. If you add up worldwide GDP you can see the problem with a world gold standard.
Well now prospectors will be out in force around Fort Tejon and Wrightwood since they have frequent large quakes.
This is yet another example of why people without science degrees should not be paid journalists to write science articles. At the very least, please hire some kid out of school who got their science degree instead of the journalism major for this stuff.
Thank you.
Or, at least someone with a GED.
Makes sense. Many of the world's richest gold deposits are near large faults.
I can just imagine soul-less hydraulic fracturing (fracking) engineers getting a hard-on. As if poisoning the waters of earth were not enough for them.....
Oh, for Christ's sake! Get a grip on yourself.
There has not be a single recorded occurrence of fracking contaminating ground water.
I say it's time to turn up the spa.
6 miles down? haha... yea ok. We couldnt even plug a hole in a fair amount of time in a 1/4 of that depth.... we got a long way to go for that.
Are you referring to the oil spill disaster? That was underwater. This is 6 miles below the surface of the earth. Also recall that during earthquakes, landmass can be pushed upwards thereby making the gold deposits accessible. As in the article, this also helps explain why such deposits are found in hills and mountains.
Startling and fascinating. I wonder if viewing the actual rock specimen gives one special insight. There is nothing like direct observation to induce a sense of the mysterious power of the cosmos.
That leads me to the question, "why should gold exist in our universe?" and also, whether civilization and history as we know it could exist without the presence of gold on our planet.
What the heck are you talking about? Your statement is juvenile at best or stupid at worst. Why should gold exist in the universe? Because when stars go supernova they create heavy elements through nuclear fusion. So yes, yes there should be gold in the universe.
As for your other equally ridiculous question... while gold has served as currency at times throughout history, gold does not serve any biological purpose as a part of our nutritional needs. Considering there are plenty of other rare/precious metals out there, we'd have used something else if gold wasn't available. So it's likely our history would have developed just fine. Although some of our technological advancements might look different than they do today.
Evox81 = "...gold does not serve any biological purpose as a part of our nutritional needs." Could it serve a biological purpose that is not nutritional, and would you care to back up your answer with documented experiments? Thanks,
There is no reason why gold "should" exist. That's anthropomorphism or projection of human thought processes onto completely unrelated astronomical processes. The gold simply exists due to its creation in exploding stars. That is, your question is nonsensical. "Should" and "Is" are generally very different things.
And, you obviously disagree with Evo81, so would you care to back up your disagreement with documented experiments?
But, you're probably a YEC (young earth creationist) and I know you won't provide any evidence for anything ever and won't read one sentence out of a science book, ever. You'll just go through your life asking stupid questions, demanding that other people spoon feed you knowledge. Then you'll continue to whine and disagree with them, based on nothing but your fantasy world superstitions.
Whoah there! What's with all the hostility?
While I agree the first question is rather silly, it's definitely not grounds to start with the name calling.
The second question on the other hand, is an interesting philosophical one. Would civilization and history as we know it, exist without gold on our planet. Considering the huge impact that the search, mining and transportation of gold has had on a great many societies, I think it's a very valid one. Also, what would our technology look like if gold wasn't as abundant on our planet as it is?
In short, don't be a dooshbag (I like that spelling better). Just because you don't care to postulate "what ifs" doesn't mean someone is inferior for caring to engage a discussion based on them.
This is one of the worst headlines for a science article ever. Becky Ostin is trying too hard to be cute and in the process, her headline is as absurd as it gets
well it is not that absurd it got you to read the articale
Does anyone really research this stuff before they write this dribble?
We have mined 188,000 tons of gold they say. How much is still buried in ancient tombs yet. What about all the reported spanish ships that have sunk with gold as stories go? At Pompii, how much may be under all the ash yet? Don't you just love nit wit experts tossing numbers on the wall to see what sticks!!
We have used up all the easy accessable gold the story says. Gosh, someone better tell them in Russia what they are bringing in is not easliy accessible. What about all the thousands that as a hobby still pan for gold. They are making enough to pay for the vacation and equipment plus putting a little extra in the pocket. How much gold in all the old churches in the world as decorations. So, between this and the silly head line,
Am I wrong to expect just a bit more from the science section?
I have panned, and used sleuce boxes, for the "easiest to get" Placer deposit gold for years in California and Oregon. I have good and bad days prospecting, but have never had any "easy" gold. I've worked my a#@ off for every spec of color, flake, or nugget I've ever found.
Nah, you're OK with that assessment.
mike: I'm guessing that the figure tossed out in the article is a sop to "stat junkies". As far as the relative ease, or lack of it, of finding gold is concerned, one must deal, to a certain extent, with the hand that one is dealt. An American going to Russia in pursuit of gold might not get very far. The Homestake mine in the US got grams of gold from tons of gravel. Also, some gold-producing processes like heap-leaching aren't especially environmentally sound.
QUOTE: "Earthquakes have the Midas touch, a new study claims"
"Open up them golden gates, California here I come!"
quakes into gold...Obama turning this country into @!$%#...who knew...
Have to bring politics into this?
Hey old man - time to take your meds, change your depends an turn on Rush Limaugh.
Why? Oh why do political trolls always have to show up in articles like this, go climb back under the rock you came from with all your other slimy trolls
Bought gold when it was $400 an ounce. Obama turned gold into dollars. $1800 an ounce to be exact.
Why is gold so valuable? Up until a few years ago, it was useless for anything except decoration. Yet man has been killing each other for thousands of years over it! Why? Iron or water is far more important!
Money = sublimated feces. Gold = refined dirt.
Not complicated.
Here we go…Water into gold…Spirit in the sky…Men into women…Women into men…UFO’s from other galaxies…talking to dead people. What a total disconnect.
didn't read the article did ya
another brilliant scientific fallacy...brought to you by MSNBC...
The title is fallacious. The geologic process isn't. And, this is not news. I saw a science program on this years ago.
A simple little article sure bring the air heads out of the woods dont it.
Yellowstone has hundreds of quakes a day and is the largest volcanic area in the world , no wonder it is chock full of gold, silver, nickel, copper, platinum and who knows what else .... let's mine the place before it pops a cork and we lose it all to the fury of it ... lol
I Have A Gold Toof
I bet you do.
I know how to turn water into gold... *evil grin*
Follow your dream, dig deep and be buried in it.
old mining legend says ; dig your tunnel into the earth , seek the riches there ,,let the tunnel swallow you up,,, then there is no air,,,, disappear beneath the stones,,,,,,, far below the ground ,,,,,, none will search to find your bones,,,, never to be found. .... GOOD LUCK