# Geology not refining but interesting



## 4metals (Dec 13, 2013)

I know this isn't a refining topic but the gold we all refine comes from the results of the answer to these questions so maybe a few of our geologist members can jump in here in this general chat. 

Late night TV has me watching the science channel and there is talk of how all of the elements present on earth came from the cosmos. 

OK I get that, and I get how after a star forms iron it gets into an out of control reaction ending up in a grand explosion which forms all of the higher metals. These elemental metals all conglomerate by gravity into space debris which eventually have collided with the mass of other elements we now call earth. 

My question is this, how did the metals end up being concentrated into geologic formations (ie. veins of gold in quartz) which we have come to recognize as gold bearing formations? If a meteorite or comet collided with the earth and its contents ended up in the molten mass that was the early earth, they were randomly mixed, how did they re-combine into concentrated areas? I understand placer deposits as these were eroded from the veins of gold in the mountain ranges but how did it get into veins and concentrated deposits that we find the world over? 

Maybe we can get some good answers to this question or provoke some thought.


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## pinman (Dec 13, 2013)

http://www.almadenminerals.com/Projects/Papers/Epithermal-Fuego.pdf


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## rickbb (Dec 13, 2013)

The geologic processes. Our "solid" earth is not really solid at all. 

It percolates, on a geologic time scale that our brief existent can't see. 

From the molten core to the top of Everest the earth is in constant state of flux, bubbling and mixing and re-stratifying the crust that make up all our earthly elements.

Of course the details of exactly how all this happens is quite complex. Combination(s) of chemistry, heat processes and erosion process with the help of atmosphere and gravity create, (re-create), the various minerals on this big ole percolator we call earth.

We duplicate most of these in refining, chemistry to dissolve and put into a solution, heat to smelt and combine, heat with atmosphere to oxidize, or not to reduce, chemistry with gravity to precipitate and drop gold from solution, etc.


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## 9kuuby9 (Dec 13, 2013)

A simple way to explain it would like this; The nucleus, or core of the planet contains all types of elements know to man. (even those that aren't discovered yet)
The question is, How is land formed on this planet? When a certain place in the earth gets over flooded a hotspot emerges. It's like an ocean of lava which travels throughout the earth in specific routes created by the structure of the earth. From it emerges a volcano, it keeps spitting all those lava (molten rocks) and essentially small amount of elements in comparison out. This creates the solid land we stand on. Normally the heavy elements should sink to the bottom, but since their is plenty of water around the lava it solidifies quite quickly due to rapid cooling and thus trapping any excess metal from sinking to the bottom of the crust. The sinking of the metal (as it is heavier) to the bottom creates these metal vines. Depending on quite a lot of factors wind, water, heat, lava consistency, type of lava and many more. A certain scenario is created by these factors, thus enabling for a specific formation of the crust and how everything is is woven in the crust as strands (vines) or as hotspots due to isolation.

I'm no expert on this subject however I just happen to know some of it.


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## Palladium (Dec 13, 2013)

http://www.haystack.mit.edu/edu/pcr/Astrochemistry/3%20-%20MATTER/nuclear%20synthesis.pdf

The Role of Near-Earth Asteroids in Long-Term Platinum Supply http://www.scribd.com/doc/22392456/Asteriods-Platinum


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## steyr223 (Dec 13, 2013)

The sleastack did it..I mean they do live
underground , right


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## 4metals (Dec 13, 2013)

It's interesting to note that the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs deposited a layer called the KT boundary and that is a layer containing Iridium at almost 30 times the concentration than found normally. That layer is used today to date rock by forming a time line in the stratum. So from geologic perspective, that layer has yet to be incorporated into the soup that makes up the molten layers beneath us. I guess that gives us an idea of how slow this process truly is. 

That would mean most of the precious metals we find today were from the early on fireball phase as they were concentrated in the belly of the earth and geologically spit up over eons of time.


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## Palladium (Dec 13, 2013)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_cycle


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## chlaurite (Dec 13, 2013)

To one hot acidic ocean, slowly add 50 septillion tons of material varying in solubility. Stir for a billion years, give or take a week. Gently evaporate that ocean, preferably with pH shifting slowly upward as you do so.

If done right, you should have fractionally crystallized the surface of the Earth out in into nice high-concentration sediment layers.

Next, preheat your mantle to 6000K. Subduct your sediment layers and bake at 6000K for 150 million years or to taste. Coax your resulting magma to the nearest volcanic rift, and baaAAAaam! You have (somewhat) neatly separated and relatively pure substances sprayed all over the place.

For added effect, have a few million years of rain and an ice age or three erode the silicates away as sand, leaving the more interesting materials highly concentrated in the occasional scattered pockets.


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## CBentre (Dec 13, 2013)

chlaurite said:


> To one hot acidic ocean, slowly add 50 septillion tons of material varying in solubility. Stir for a billion years, give or take a week. Gently evaporate that ocean, preferably with pH shifting slowly upward as you do so.
> 
> If done right, you should have fractionally crystallized the surface of the Earth out in into nice high-concentration sediment layers.
> 
> ...



Now that's a interesting way to put it. For some reason it makes me more curious on what the real objectives are on mars.....


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## AndyWilliams (Dec 13, 2013)

Interesting thread. I haven't followed the links yet, but my initial thoughts would be to consider the temperatures. Veins of gold, for example, could develop as the molten rock solidified and cracks and low points became available. The temperature would still be high enough for gold to stay molten. That liquid found low spots or cracks in the newly formed rock and then was covered by other forming rock, likely melting again. But, because of gold's density, it likely stayed close to the older rock and thereby created the veins humans have found. Course, I'm probably bonkers about the whole thing, but I like the mental exercise!


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## Harold_V (Dec 14, 2013)

It is generally accepted that gold is deposited from solution, not from the molten state. I tend to agree with that assessment, especially when considering the miniscule particles that are commonly found, as well as wire gold in quartz. Nature works in strange and wondrous ways.


Harold


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## steyr223 (Dec 14, 2013)

Then tell me this why don't you find gold deposit or heavy metal deposits in say
places like Hawaii or along the mid-atlantic ridge or for that matter the ocean bottom which is constantly being made as magma comes out of the mid-atlantic ridge

Of course the ocean floor is no more than 200,000 years old at its oldest point bur that 
shouldn't matter if what you say is true as the material
That makes up the ocean floor I would believe to be millions of
years of the mixing up the oldest of material to be spit out 

Thanks steyr223 rob


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## CBentre (Dec 14, 2013)

4metals said:


> It's interesting to note that the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs deposited a layer called the KT boundary and that is a layer containing Iridium at almost 30 times the concentration than found normally. That layer is used today to date rock by forming a time line in the stratum. So from geologic perspective, that layer has yet to be incorporated into the soup that makes up the molten layers beneath us. I guess that gives us an idea of how slow this process truly is.
> 
> That would mean most of the precious metals we find today were from the early on fireball phase as they were concentrated in the belly of the earth and geologically spit up over eons of time.



And China just sent a rocket to the moon and is apparently landing in a crater most likely caused by a large asteroid. Hmmm an attempt to mine the moon or simply target practice before they start asteroid jumping?


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## steyr223 (Dec 14, 2013)

Ok sorry fotget the previous post
and would you believe this is what my degree
Is in. Open mouth insert foot......

Volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits, also known as volcanic-associated, volcanic-hosted, and volcano-sedimentary-hosted massive sulfide deposits, are major sources of Zn, Cu, Pb, Ag and Au, and significant sources for Co, Sn, Se, Mn, Cd, In, Bi, Te, Ga and Ge. They typically occur as lenses of polymetallic massive sulfide that form at or near the seafloor in submarine volcanic environments, and are classified according to either base metal content, gold content and host-rock lithology. There are close to 350 known VMS deposits in Canada and over 800 known worldwide. Historically, they account for 27% of Canada's Cu production, 49% of its Zn, 20% of its Pb, 40% of its Ag and 3% of its Au. They are discovered in submarine volcanic terranes that range in age from the 3.4 Ga to actively-forming deposits in modern seafloor environments. The most common feature among all types of VMS deposits is that they are formed in extensional tectonic settings, including both oceanic seafloor spreading and arc environments. Most ancient VMS deposits that are still preserved in the geological record formed mainly in oceanic and continental nascent-arc, rifted arc and back-arc settings. Primitive bimodal mafic volcanic-dominated oceanic rifted arc and bimodal, felsic-dominated siliciclastic continental back-arc terranes contain some of the world's most economically important VMS districts. Most, but not all significant VMS mining districts are defined by deposit clusters formed within rifts or calderas. Their clustering is further attributed to a common heat source that triggers large-scale sub-seafloor fluid convection systems. These subvolcanic intrusions may also supply metals to the VMS hydrothermal systems through magmatic devolatilization. As a result of large scale fluid flow VMS mining districts are commonly characterized by extensive semi-conformable zones of hydrothermal alteration which intensifies into zones of discordant alteration in the immediate footwall and hangingwall of individual deposits. VMS camps can be further characterized by the presence of thin, but areally extensive units of ferruginous chemical sediment formed from exhalation and distribution of hydrothermal particulate


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## g_axelsson (Dec 14, 2013)

Sorry, I have a hard time forgetting your previous post as it was so totally wrong. I just want to make the corrections a little clearer. All you did was a dump from some website without even giving a link to the source.


steyr223 said:


> Then tell me this why don't you find gold deposit or heavy metal deposits in say
> places like Hawaii or along the mid-atlantic ridge or for that matter the ocean bottom which is constantly being made as magma comes out of the mid-atlantic ridge


Gold IS found in the fresh magma (just as you described in your second post) but it is just very diluted. There are no commercial deposits found so far on the ocean floor. Gold is concentrated by geological processes (chemical and physical). For example as hot solutions that deposit gold and other sulfide minerals when the temperature drops, a prime example is "black smokers" found along the mid-Atlantic ridge. Physical processes that concentrate gold is placer deposits concentrated by flowing water or on beaches by waves.
It's only after geological processes have been at work we find concentrations of minerals high enough to make it commercially viable to mine them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent



steyr223 said:


> Of course the ocean floor is no more than 200,000 years old at its oldest point bur that
> shouldn't matter if what you say is true as the material
> That makes up the ocean floor I would believe to be millions of
> years of the mixing up the oldest of material to be spit out


I don't know where you got that age, 200.000 years, but it just puny relatively to the geological scale. The Atlantic grows with 5 cm per year, in 200.000 year it has grown with 1.000.000 cm = 10.000 meter or 10 km. I know the Atlantic is wider than that so it has to be older.
A quick check shows that the sea floors could be up to 125 million years old.
http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/blseafloorage.htm

Göran


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## steyr223 (Dec 14, 2013)

You are correct goran I was wrong
as I said

And yes I just posted information found elsewhere
My knowledge of all subjects seems to be getting less
Every day

The 200,000 came from proffesor joe crishony(spelled wrong)
Under which I studied under for many years
From 1988 in a paleantology class if I remember
But I never challanged his teachings
What you said about the speed sounds indeed correct
Maybe it was just the mid alanic ridge and not the floor

One thing he use to say was in 50,000 years hawaii
would be part of california but he was probaly wrong


My old phone doesn't have a spell checker and I still can't
Find my glasses nor can I scroll past the bottom of this window
To see or fix my errors
So.....sorry
Thanks steyr223 rob


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## butcher (Dec 14, 2013)

I always heard California was going to fall of into the ocean, maybe that professor is wrong and it would be California floating out into the ocean towards Hawaii. :lol:


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## CBentre (Dec 14, 2013)

butcher said:


> I always heard California was going to fall of into the ocean, maybe that professor is wrong and it would be California floating out into the ocean towards Hawaii. :lol:




Just heard the other night they are overdue for a large earthquake that might just do as you say. Yes they have been saying it for years but all indications suggest it's been too quiet in that region lately. I would never wish something of that magnitude on anyone and I would hope they get fair warning in the event something does happen.


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## niteliteone (Dec 14, 2013)

CBentre said:


> butcher said:
> 
> 
> > I always heard California was going to fall of into the ocean, maybe that professor is wrong and it would be California floating out into the ocean towards Hawaii. :lol:
> ...


We just had an earthquake here about 30 miles from my home night before last. They keep shaking. For the last 44 hours we have had several. Not strong, but this is not common here where I live.
here's the link to show;
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/


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## 4metals (Dec 15, 2013)

When I was in college, the conventional wisdom was that all of the gold on earth would fill a cube 50 feet on all sides. I was watching a show on the History channel called Big History about gold and their claim is there is enough gold in the earths core to cover the entire earth in 9 feet of gold. We should keep that number to ourselves otherwise the bears on Wall Street will get scared and run the price down even more!


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## macfixer01 (Dec 16, 2013)

4metals said:


> When I was in college, the conventional wisdom was that all of the gold on earth would fill a cube 50 feet on all sides. I was watching a show on the History channel called Big History about gold and their claim is there is enough gold in the earths core to cover the entire earth in 9 feet of gold. We should keep that number to ourselves otherwise the bears on Wall Street will get scared and run the price down even more!




Since gold at the Earth's core won't likely ever be accessible to us, it really has no bearing on the world supply. I believe what they're saying goes back to the theory that the majority of heavy metals originally present in the Earth sunk to the core when the Earth was still molten. Then the precious metals near the surface arrived later from meteors or were pushed up from below through volcanic and geothermal activity?


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## rickbb (Dec 16, 2013)

Wonder what some of that super dense gold from the core would look like?


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## g_axelsson (Dec 16, 2013)

Gold is called a "siderophile" since it is easily dissolved in liquid iron. (Just as iridium, platinum and other PGM:s) If the data from iron meteorites are consistent with the core there should be something in the vicinity of 1 g/ton (1ppm) in the iron core. Comparable with some gold mines.

Göran


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## butcher (Dec 17, 2013)

Maybe that molten gold being heavier is sinking all the way through the earth to China or Africa.

Well that does not make any sense, the world keeps turning, so I guess that molten gold is just going to stay stirred up in the center of the melt, I just hope some bubbles up close to home, not too close though.

What would be a good flux to pour into an active volcano?


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## niteliteone (Dec 17, 2013)

butcher said:


> What would be a good flux to pour into an active volcano?


Politicians :?:


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## g_axelsson (Dec 17, 2013)

butcher said:


> Maybe that molten gold being heavier is sinking all the way through the earth to China or Africa.
> 
> Well that does not make any sense, the world keeps turning, so I guess that molten gold is just going to stay stirred up in the center of the melt, I just hope some bubbles up close to home, not too close though.
> 
> What would be a good flux to pour into an active volcano?


I thought Harold already told us that, metals dissolve in molten metals. :wink: 
... as for the flux, I can't improve on politicians, and you would probably never run out of flux.

Göran


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## 4metals (Dec 17, 2013)

Flux is supposed to make things flow

I guess that rules out using American Politicians, they would freeze up the whole process!


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## macfixer01 (Dec 17, 2013)

4metals said:


> Flux is supposed to make things flow
> 
> I guess that rules out using American Politicians, they would freeze up the whole process!




Yes it's political constipation!


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## gold4mike (Dec 17, 2013)

niteliteone said:


> butcher said:
> 
> 
> > What would be a good flux to pour into an active volcano?
> ...



My vote for best one word answer ever :shock:


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## macfixer01 (Dec 17, 2013)

With all the talk about sulfides, I thought I'd share a picture I pulled off Ebay. I've been watching the auction for this ring because I really like the look of the stone and the bear motif on the sides. It's way more than I'd want to pay for it though (over $2800), and I don't see them dropping the price anytime soon. The stone in this ring is called Covellite and is a copper sulfide mineral which comes in a range of blues and purples and has streaks of gold colored iron sulfide running through it (looks more silver in this photo). According to their website the stone came from an estate collection dug from the long abandoned Kennicott mine in Alaska, and they sell their jewelry under the name Star Of Alaska. I guess it's reminiscent of the Alaska flag with gold stars on a field of blue. Anyway I've looked up other sources of Covellite cabochons for sale and there is some out there from another long abandoned mine in Montana, and it's also found someplace in Italy. So here is the picture...


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## niteliteone (Dec 17, 2013)

The Precious !!!


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## Platdigger (Dec 17, 2013)

That is a quite beautiful stone. Don't think I have ever seen that one.
Thanks for the pic.


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## maynman1751 (Dec 18, 2013)

niteliteone said:


> butcher said:
> 
> 
> > What would be a good flux to pour into an active volcano?
> ...



Remember what Harold says "garbage in garbage out"! :lol:


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## nickvc (Dec 18, 2013)

Id be worried using politicians, all that extra hot air could cause a serious meltdown :roll:


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