Gold

Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel. What they don't say is
that the heaviest should be at the center like gold, lead etc. The
center core of the earth could be liquid gold; which would make a great
magnetic field. Asteroid impacts may have sloshed up some of the heavy
elements and the crust solidified before it could sink back to the
center. That's why some is accessible to us. A dead planet like Mars
could have solid gold at it's center. Even the moon could have all it's
heavy elements at the core. Worth going after.

In article WVVfh.4492$_55.4108@trndny09,
Paul Bunion wrote:

Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel. What they don't say is
that the heaviest should be at the center like gold, lead etc. The
center core of the earth could be liquid gold; which would make a great
magnetic field.

There just isn't that much gold and lead compared to things like iron,
carbon, oxygen, and silicon, which are very abundant elements in the
universe.

Asteroid impacts may have sloshed up some of the heavy
elements and the crust solidified before it could sink back to the
center. That's why some is accessible to us.

I really doubt it; crust solidification wasn't that fast a process.
Rather, the molten core churns and occasionally stuff gets brought up
through vulcanism and through formation of new crust. This stuff is
very diffuse, but over time it gets concentrated mainly by water into
usable veins.

A dead planet like Mars could have solid gold at its center.

There's no doubt a little gold on Mars, but no reason to think it's any
more (or any more accessible) than it is on Earth.

Even the moon could have all it's heavy elements at the core.

Yeah, except that the Moon's heavy elements are mostly the lighter ones
on Earth, since the Moon is mainly a big hunk of Earth's crust that got
knocked into orbit. You won't find much there that isn't pretty
abundant in the crust on Earth, except what has since been deposited by
asteroids, comets, and the solar wind.

If you want to go prospecting for valuable minerals (e.g. platinum-group
metals) on the Moon, I think the place to look is impact craters, where
perhaps not all material from the impactor was lost.

Best,
- Joe

Considering the cost of launching things into space and bringing them
back, would something
like that be economically viable?

On 13 Dec 2006 13:44:00 -0800, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Considering the cost of launching things into space and bringing them
back, would something
like that be economically viable?

Not at current launch costs, but possible at future ones. It's likely
that earth-based sources still be cheaper. Platinum-group-metals are
a different story, though the cost of access to/from space would still
have to come down significantly...

Paul Bunion wrote:

Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel.

Everyone doesn't know that, because it's wrong.

What sank to the middle of the earth was a heavier *phase*.
The molten metal was denser than silicate, so it went down.

However, whether a particular element partitioned into the
silicate phase or the metal phase is a function of its chemistry,
not its atomic weight. Uranium, for example, not only went
into the silicate, it went into the light silicates when the
mantle further fractionated. The Earth's continental crust
is enriched in uranium by about a factor of 1000 vs. the average
composition of the planet.

Moreover, the partitioning is a chemical equilibrium process,
so unless the equilibrium is particularly one sided not *all*
the element will go into one phase. Finally, there's been
subsequent stirring of the mantle, which can carry material
back up from the core-mantle boundary.

Paul

Paul Bunion wrote:

Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel. What they don't say is
that the heaviest should be at the center like gold, lead etc. The
center core of the earth could be liquid gold; which would make a great
magnetic field. Asteroid impacts may have sloshed up some of the heavy
elements and the crust solidified before it could sink back to the
center. That's why some is accessible to us. A dead planet like Mars
could have solid gold at it's center. Even the moon could have all it's
heavy elements at the core. Worth going after.



1.) We know the size of the Earth, and we know its density from its
gravitational field. These agree with a core made primarily of
nickel-iron, not gold.
2.) The outer core of the earth is molten, the core itself is solid due
to the pressure on the nickel-iron; if it were molten there would be no
magnetic field as the iron atoms couldn't align themselves in one
direction, as they can in a solid magnetic form of the iron.
3.) Being only very slightly magnetic, gold would not make a "great
magnetic field" it would make almost no magnetic field.
4.) assuming you could bring back gold from the other planets in large
quantities cheaply, all that you would do is cause the price of gold to
drop precipitously on the world market, causing all the nation's gold
reserves to become almost worthless. this could lead to a world-wide
financial collapse.
Someone once wrote a science fiction story called "Element 79" where a
solid gold meteorite falls to Earth, and causes society to collapse due
to what it does to international gold prices.

Pat

wrote:

Considering the cost of launching things into space and bringing them
back, would something
like that be economically viable?



You are going to need some mighty impressive parachutes to land it. ;-)
With our current systems, you'd get nowhere near the break-even point
even if the surface of the Moon were covered with neatly stacked gold
ingots you could just shovel up and bring back.
You might be able to do something if it were covered in 100 carat
flawless diamonds....but again, as soon as you get anywhere, all that
happens is the price drops till it's no longer economically feasible to
do the flights.

Pat

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:31:50 GMT, Paul Bunion wrote:

Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel. What they don't say is
that the heaviest should be at the center like gold, lead etc.

Right, like the Earth's ocean should be composed of pure fresh water, with
all the salt sinking to the bottom and filling the deep trenches.

Except that it doesn't work that way. Gravity is the weakest force in the
universe, and loses to chemistry every time.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
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Here, John Schilling wrote:

Except that it doesn't work that way. Gravity is the weakest force in the
universe, and loses to chemistry every time.

Sir? I've got a black hole made of peanut butter on line 3, wants to
talk to you about cholesterol...

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't subjected you to searches without a
warrant, it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because of
the Fourth Amendment.

Paul Bunion wrote:
Everybody knows that when the earth was totally molten all the heavier
elements sank to the center like iron and nickel. What they don't say is
that the heaviest should be at the center like gold, lead etc. The
center core of the earth could be liquid gold; which would make a great
magnetic field. Asteroid impacts may have sloshed up some of the heavy
elements and the crust solidified before it could sink back to the
center. That's why some is accessible to us. A dead planet like Mars
could have solid gold at it's center. Even the moon could have all it's
heavy elements at the core. Worth going after.


It has been written (Debate about the Earth:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1972Icar...16..406D) that getting to the
surface of the moon and Mars is easier than getting to the core of the
Earth. The Earth's core is believed to be nickel surrounded by liquid
iron. No gold.