The gold nucleus is filtered to the surface

A team of scientists from Getinen UniversityIn Germany, I found that part The main gold of the Earth This migrates to the surface. It has long been known that the core of our planet suffers from precious metals, Like the gold that melted there when the earth was still in diapers. However, it was still not clear that part of this gold found the way to appearField

Does this mean that we can become much richer? I hope, but no. On the one hand, the share of gold that escaped from the core of the earth minimumThe field and, on the other hand, although he headed to the earth’s crust, it is not so accessible as to reach out and take it. In most cases, you can’t even easily access.

Despite all this, this is a very useful conclusion, since it gives us very interesting data about The origin and subsequent behavior of our planetThe field and why not? Other rocky planets.

Golden search systems of the 21st century

The team of German scientists found gold in Hawaii. But he did not do this with a sieve or a bat, such as the search engines of the old gold fever. In your case, they used Very new and specific methods for detecting isotopes.

It all started when they analyzed some Volcanic breeds extracted in Hawaii. Discovered that they had a rather high share precious metals, Including gold. Initially, this did not have to be something strange. Gold reached the earth in two different ways. On the one hand, these and other metals present in space are combined during the formation of our planet and were placed in the nucleus. But, on the other hand, there was more gold that reached us on board MeteoritesThe latter was stuck in the earth’s crust.

The fact is that, as a good precious metal, the surface gold is not enough. It is believed that in the nucleus there is enough gold to level the entire surface of our planet with a thickness of 50 centimeters. This is 99 % of the total gold of the planet. And no, we cannot get access to him, we are not the character of Julio Verne.

The irreplaceable role of isotopes

When searching for stones so rich in gold, the authors of the study that has just been published in Nature They thought part of the gold gold would be Appears. They suggest that this is possible, because there is enough evidence that this happened earlier with Iron and primary heliumNevertheless, they could not know for sure whether the same thing happened with gold. Or yes?

They came to them, which could be determined by analyzing the presence of certain isotopes in the same rock. In particular, Isotopes of rutheniaThe isotopes are atoms of the same element that have A different number of neutronsTo make his atomic mass slightly. In the case of ruthenia, it is known that the isotopes of the nucleus are slightly different from the insulation of the bark. But very little. The difference is so small that there are still no techniques that could distinguish them. These scientists, on the other hand, managed to develop Try much more precisely This made it possible to analyze.

Thus, they discovered that ruthenium, accompanied by gold in volcanic rocks, was much more common in isotopes from the nucleus. Therefore, gold should come from the same place.

What does all this mean?

This conclusion suggests that part Siderophilic metalsThose that were locked in the land core, when the earth formed, migrate into the core and from there to the bark. Most of these elements are not available. There are very few that can be extracted from volcanic breeds, such as those that are analyzed in this study. Therefore, we, longing for gold, we will not notice the difference. But we have new information about our planet. We know that the core is not as isolated as we thought, and that its content can avoid. It is true that the reasons are not the same, but they are equally interesting, like those of those hunters of past years.