Sounds like they are sputtering copper but how you get sand (silicon dioxide in the form of quartz) out of it is nonsense, muchless gold.
Actually, I love these kind of articles. They have some journalist that does not have a clue about what they are talking about who writes a ridiculous scenario of copper into gold. But usually they finish with the statement, “All the big problems have been solved and now all we need to do is scale it for manufacturing.” LOL
So... in other words, it is pretty much like 99 out of 100 news articles published these days.
;-)