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Such transmutation is possible in particle accelerators or nuclear reactors, although the production cost is estimated to be a trillion times the market price of gold. Since there is only one stable gold isotope, 197 Au, nuclear reactions must create this isotope in order to produce usable gold. [4]
Gold occurs principally as a native metal, i.e., gold itself.Sometimes it is alloyed to a greater or lesser extent with silver, which is called electrum.Native gold can occur as sizeable nuggets, as fine grains or flakes in alluvial deposits, or as grains or microscopic particles (known as colour) embedded in rock minerals.
Most gold is mined as native metal and can be found as nuggets, veins or wires of gold in a rock matrix, or fine grains of gold, mixed in with sediments or bound within rock. The iconic image of gold mining for many is gold panning, which is a method of separating flakes and nuggets of pure gold from river sediments due to their great density ...
A gold nugget is a naturally occurring piece of native gold. Watercourses often concentrate nuggets and finer gold in placers . Nuggets are recovered by placer mining , but they are also found in residual deposits where the gold-bearing veins or lodes are weathered.
Gold cycling starts with the microbial weathering of gold-bearing rocks and minerals which mobilizes gold in the environment via release of elemental gold and solubilization. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The Witwatersrand gold deposits host approximately 30% of the world's gold resources, a large proportion of which is directly associated with organic carbon ...
Amalgamation of disrupted continental masses to form new supercontinents, known as Wilson cycles, play a key role in the formation of deposits, by initiating major regional change of the geochemical, mineralogical and structural nature of the lithosphere. [6] Orogenic gold deposits were only formed in certain time slices of the Earth's history.
Gold, a chemical element; Genomes OnLine Database; Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, a NASA Explorer Mission of Opportunity; GOLD (parser), an open-source parser-generator of BNF-based grammars; Graduates of the Last Decade, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers program to garner more university level student members
They are primarily made up of quartz veins also known as lodes or reefs, which contain either native gold or gold sulfides and tellurides. Lode gold deposits are usually hosted in basalt or in sediments known as turbidite , although when in faults , they may occupy intrusive igneous rocks such as granite .