Scientists from the University of Queensland (Australia) have just published a study showing that gold is created by water and earthquakes.
The results of this study have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Dion Weatherley, a geophysicist at the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study, said: “Earthquakes cause geological faults, creating countless openings. Water quickly filled these openings. It’s especially happening about 10km underground, where there’s extremely high pressure and temperature.”
“Such environmental conditions, plus the fact that water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silicon dioxide and some other necessary substances will help create gold. Then, aftershocks or other earthquakes cause the fissures. The wider opening causes a sudden drop in pressure, the water quickly evaporates, and any gold particles present in the liquid precipitate almost immediately.
Gold – the inexhaustible human need.
The tectonic process in the Earth’s crust causes repeated earthquakes to help form the sedimentary gold layer (golden sand deposits) . Scientists say the world’s gold is derived from sedimentary veins that formed during the geological period of mountain-forming that took place 3 billion years ago.
To answer the question of the origin of gold, how did gold transform from a molten state to a mineable solid state? Scientists simulated the process of depressurization in liquid-filled openings during an earthquake.
With this approach, they have the answer. Melted gold from the ground has been pushed up by the movement of the Earth’s crust. Gold takes the form of ingots because the accompanying minerals are oxidized by weathering and the washing of dust into streams and rivers where gold accumulates or as a result of water action.
The study by Australian geologists also said that a single tremor would not produce gold of economic value. It would take 100,000 years to form a vessel containing 100 tons of gold.
Discovering the mechanism of gold formation will help people in finding and exploring new gold mines in the future. It has been calculated that the world’s gold reserves reach 250,000 tons. To date, mankind has extracted about 150 thousand tons of gold from the ground. With an average annual production of 2,300 tons, gold ore will be exhausted by 2050.
In Vietnam, gold ore is scatteredly distributed in many places with a small scale, the total resource is estimated at several thousand tons and the reserve is only a few hundred tons. Up to now, nearly 500 original gold ore sites and mines have been discovered (true gold ores and other ores containing gold). In which, nearly 30 places have been searched, explored and evaluated for reserves with the amount of about 300 tons of gold.