Scientists discover unexpected process that can turn quartz into huge gold nuggets

Scientists have uncovered the truth behind the incredible process that can turn quartz into huge gold nuggets.

Gold and precious metals have long fascinated human beings, particularly when they are uncovered in vast amounts. The largest golden nugget ever found weighed as much as an adult man and it still holds the record today despite being discovered in 1869.

Now, scientists think they have got to the bottom of how such huge nuggets are formed and it’s all to do with the immense pressure placed on quartz.

Big golden nuggets typically form deep underground along the fracture lines that run through quartz. It is now thought that the force generated from earthquakes squeezes the material hard enough that it generates an electric field.

Experts believe the pressure and electric field drives the process of gold forming. In experiments conducted by experts at Monash University in Melbourne, they found that seismic waves from earthquakes that produced a strong enough electric voltage in quartz were able to extract dissolved gold from the fluids that try to infiltrate the mineral’s veins.

Dr Christopher Voisey, alongside other experts in the field, immersed lumps of quartz into water that had gold dissolved within it. They then put the quartz under the same stress it might experience during an earthquake and found that the electric field it created in the quartz was rough to extract gold from the surrounding solution, resulting in tiny particles of gold on the surface of the quartz.

“Since piezoelectric voltages are instantaneous and leave behind no visible tracer, this can rationalise why gold nuggets commonly appear to be ‘floating’ in quartz veins with no obvious chemical or physical trap,” the researchers wrote in Nature Geoscience. “We suggest that piezoelectric gold accumulation could be a solution to the longstanding ‘gold nugget paradox’.”

They continued: “This mechanism can help explain the creation of large nuggets and the commonly observed highly interconnected gold networks within quartz vein fractures.”

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.