Free Republic

The Carlin-type gold deposits in Nevada, U.S., are the origin of five percent of the global production and 75 percent of the U.S. production of gold. In these deposits, gold does not occur in the form of nuggets or veins, but is hidden—together with arsenic—in pyrite, also known as "fool's gold." A team of scientists from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam—German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ has now shown experimentally, for the first time that the concentration of gold directly depends on the content of arsenic in the pyrite. The results were published in the journal Science Advances. In the Earth's...

Curtin University research has found tiny amounts of gold can be trapped inside pyrite, commonly known as ‘fool’s gold’, which would make it much more valuable than its name suggests. This study, published in the journal Geology in collaboration with the University of Western Australia and the China University of Geoscience, provides an in-depth analysis to better understand the mineralogical location of the trapped gold in pyrite, which may lead to more environmentally friendly gold extraction methods. Lead researcher Dr. Denis Fougerouse from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said this new type of “invisible” gold has not previously...