[Gay State Conservative]

Not being a physicist or a metallurgist I don't know the answer but it might still be a stupid question:could one of these phony bars have been detected through the use of X-Ray or some other kind of scan?

[djf]

Not sure. I dunno.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/25/the-problem-of-fake-gold-bars/

Gold is far more conductive than tungsten and slightly denser.

X-ray crystallography requires making a powder of the sample, it is not non-destructive in the sense that the sample cannot retain its form.

[Bruce Kurtz]

Not sure of X-rays, but the Pawn Star dudes used a simple drill to determine whether the bar was real

[Theoria]

Lol. Ya don't need much equipment. If ya can punch a large dent into the bar with a nail, in all likely its gold.

Ya don't get much harder than tungsten. Think Captain Americas shield, but in real life.

[ScottfromNJ]

Ultrasound testing.

[The Antiyuppie]

I’m not even sure that an industrial X-ray machine would go through that.

There is no way that a specific gravity/density of the two metals would be identical, it might just take more sensitive equipment to tell the difference.