Man has become so accustomed to constant changes and new technologies that he has stopped paying attention to familiar things.
The wheel, fire, fabric, stone, metal, even plastic have become something commonplace and everyday for us.
However, there is one eternal material that has not lost its relevance: gold has been and remains a measure of value and a driver of progress.
Where did this amazing metal come from, without which our banking system does not exist and space flights cannot be imagined?
Why is everything that is around in one way or another connected with gold?
Introducing a Man to Gold
Gold chips obtained by sifting gold-bearing sand
The first known written references to the use of gold in this meaning date back to the Egyptian records of the Menes dynasty in 3100 BC, and gold religious objects are found during excavations of the Sumerian city-states, at the site of Mohenjo-Daro.
Many of the oldest sources claim that gold came to them from the cradle of humanity - the African territories that today contain Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zimbabwe and possibly Rwanda.
Unfortunately, the rarity of gold has left it a cult material - otherwise, instead of the “Copper Age”, we would know the historical “Golden Age”, which would have come much earlier.
Preserved mask of the Inca Empire
However, the civilizations of Central and South America were able to combine the cult and industrial significance of gold, making from it not only amulets and coins, but also many more prosaic things - for example, the well-known “tiles” with which the Indians paid Pizarro’s ransom for the Great Inca.
Unfortunately, New World artifacts were melted down into ingots . They could not only talk about the use of gold, but also suggest how ancient Europeans, who also lost ancient things made of precious metals in processing, could have used it.
Does the Law allow it? Conditions for the legality of activity when receiving a permanent income
To mine precious metals at home, you will definitely need a license. Otherwise, such transactions with gold will be illegal. Such operations are regulated by Article 191 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on “Illegal trafficking in amber, jade or other semi-precious stones, precious metals, precious stones or pearls.”
- Opening an LLC with a legal address. A license can be obtained by a legal entity that has a legal address. Therefore, to legally extract precious metals, you need to open an LLC.
- Obtaining a license to operate. A license can only be obtained by a legal entity with a valid legal address. The applicant must provide the following documents to the Assay Office:
- Statement;
- Copies of documents for real estate premises used in the activity;
- Confirmation that the premises used comply with fire safety requirements.
Unique properties of gold that we will still need
Mercury still helps in gold mining today
In addition to malleability and ductility, gold quickly showed its other wonderful properties. One of them is the ability to create the thinnest films, which are called “gold leaf”.
They are produced by long-term rolling, forging, or applying a melt of gold with mercury - an amalgam. The result is sheets up to ~0.1 μm (100 nm) thick. If desired, you can create the thinnest but strong wire threads.
In addition, for a long time it was believed that gold could not be dissolved with acid. At least pure: of pure acids, gold can only be treated with selenium acid, but traditionally they use aqua regia.
Gold sand
Unique physical properties and rare but unique production from gold-bearing waters (the most ancient mining was alluvial) or nuggets gave humanity a reason to consider gold “the metal of the gods.”
Even the notorious “Golden Fleece” is nothing more than sheep skins spread in rivers to obtain particles of gold. After a long period of washing, they were burned and small gold bars were obtained.
Where did ancient people think gold came from? The gift of the underground gods, their ceremonial things and the rays of the sun itself.
The most famous diamonds
Diamond Kohinoor
the most famous diamond today is the Kohinoor. In Farsi it means “Mountain of Light”. Legend has it that its first owner was a boy who appeared several thousand years before the birth of Christ near the Yamuna River. This was not an ordinary child, but a product of the Sun-Karna. The stone was an ornament to his embroidered cap.
It is “Kohinoor” that is the “prima” of the British crown.
Over its history, the stone has seen a lot of blood and changed its owner until it became part of the English crown. Now it is in the Tower Castle and is securely guarded. Many say that the only worthy price for this stone is the life of the one who wants to get it.
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Diamond "Tiffany"
In 1877, a diamond was found in Kimberley, which became the world's largest yellow diamond. It weighed 287 carats and was sold for $18,000—unheard of money at that time. Charles Tiffany stone . The cutting took almost two years, and as a result the stone took on a quadrangular shape and shone with 89 facets.
The unusual cut of this diamond makes it very interesting.
As a result, the stone decorated the window of a store on Fifth Avenue in New York. The first person who was able to feel it on her body was the star of the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Audrey Hepburn. After that, a diamond with an unusual cut and a setting in the shape of a diamond bird went to auction, but was never sold. As a result, it became the symbol of the Tiffany&Co store.
Diamond "Black Orlov"
Another world-famous diamond is called “Black Orlov” . Initially, he was buried in one of the Indian tombs, but robbers were able to kidnap him. As a result, as the legend goes, they brought a curse on themselves and on everyone into whose hands the stone fell.
The same “Black Orlov”...
Countess Nadezhda Orlova and Princess Golitsyna are attributed to the victims of the stone. It is also customary to attribute Jay Paris to the victims, who wanted to sell the stone in New York, but for some reason jumped off the roof instead.
There are other famous diamonds that have caused a lot of problems for their owners. And all because there is a lot of money behind them, a symbol of power and simply a charming shine that “blows the roof off.” There is no need to give them a mystical meaning; it is enough to simply understand human greed and the desire for easy money, perhaps even at the cost of someone else’s life.
Gold appeared in the explosions of stars. But you can do it yourself
Unrefined gold nugget. Such people have been found, are being found, and will continue to be found.
The subsequent development of science, especially nuclear physics and materials science, forced scientists to think seriously: where do certain compounds and elements of the Periodic Table come from in nature?
Gold is present not only in deposits. It is dispersed throughout the planet, and is present in small proportions even in animals and people themselves.
According to some estimates, the ocean contains 20 million tons of gold dissolved in water, but in such low concentrations that the process of extracting it at this stage is too expensive.
It has long been assumed that gold was present in the original composition of the Earth before the formation of the earth's crust, and that the volcanic activity of the planet caused it to partially “rise” to the surface in the form of deposits.
Gold-bearing vein. Even primitive technology can extract metal from such a material.
This theory is partly explained by the presence of the element in post-igneous rocks. In addition, most primary deposits have large metal inclusions and are located in the form of gold-bearing veins.
However, large amounts of gold are dispersed in solid rocks in atomic form. In addition, planets are formed from gas and dust clouds and contain only some heavy elements in very small quantities.
As modern data show, to obtain gold, a nuclear reaction with high neutron radiation is necessary. This is the only way, through a long chain of transformations, to obtain radioactive gold.
A supernova was once considered the origin of gold
But the spectral lines of the Sun contain inclusions corresponding to gold. Therefore, it is there and could get to Earth with the solar wind.
If you didn't get there before. The solar wind would not provide an even distribution of the element. These contradictions and advances in astrophysics led to the emergence of a theory about the creation of gold during supernova explosions.
And only in 2013, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge managed to detect traces of gold when analyzing a gamma-ray burst recorded at a distance of about 4 billion light years from Earth.
The gamma-ray burst was associated with the collision of two neutron stars and the subsequent explosion. It was this super explosion that gave birth to gold weighing several of our moons, as well as other heavy metals.
It was after such an event that gold came to us
Probably, a similar stream of particles visited the Earth about 540 million years ago and even earlier, leaving the first gold-bearing rocks.
Gradually, scattered atoms under the influence of geological processes formed modern gold veins, which all of humanity is familiar with from dozens of works describing the “gold rush”.
How does a mining and processing plant work?
In order to process the rock and find diamonds in it, mining dump trucks transport thousands of tons of ore per day to special plants. There, the ore passes through various crushing and grinding systems. Often they differ from each other, but the whole point is to break the rock into small stones, then sift it by size in a screen (a special screening machine) and subject it to further processing.
Large pieces of rock are washed with water in order to obtain diamonds, and small pieces are exposed to special reagents that literally pull diamonds out of the rock. The spent rock undergoes additional testing - X-ray luminescence separation . The fact is that diamonds glow under X-rays. This property is used to check the quality of rock processing. The slightest flashes are detected automatically and part of the rock is blown off the belt. Then she is sent for additional testing.
The mining and processing plant is a huge structure with a bunch of specialized equipment.
When diamonds are collected, there are still impurities among them, and this is where manual labor begins. They are sorted by hand, removing even the slightest extra stones. After this, the diamonds are checked and sorted according to a huge number of parameters in order to be sent to special exchanges, where jewelers will buy them for further processing and use in jewelry.
There is gold in everything, even in us. But just a little
Gold is almost always mined where there is water: it is washed out of the ores
Bombardment from space was a success: today gold can be found everywhere, although it is very small as a percentage of the total mass of the planet.
So, in a cubic meter of water there is at least 5 milligrams of this metal. Primary gold ores contain at least 25-40% of the element , which is very high compared to other industrial metals.
In addition, the native form of both relatively pure gold and its natural alloy with silver, electrum, is common.
Another form of native gold: “grains”
Often, nuggets are found in secondary bulk deposits that appeared as a result of the destruction of primary gold-bearing rocks.
Other, lighter minerals leave the area under the influence of wind or water, increasing the concentration of gold in a certain area.
Thanks to such deposits, humanity began to mine gold industrially 3,000 years ago. At the same time, the first jewelry found in the tombs of ancient Egypt and Sumer, the cradles of human civilization, dates back.
Modern gold hunters are little different from their counterparts a thousand or two ago
Today, about 166.6 thousand tons of gold . Every year this figure increases by almost 3 thousand tons, and the figure is growing steadily.
Less than structural metals such as iron or nickel. But almost 30% of the precious metal in the past was obtained from native and alluvial forms, which is impossible for others.
Gravitational differentiation
This gold mining technology involves grinding rock that contains the metal. After these rocks have been loaded onto trucks, they are taken to special mills. Inside these mills, huge stones crumble under the pressure of large balls made of strong cast iron.
After crushing, this entire mass is placed in a centrifuge, in which the earth and stones are separated from the pyrite. Pyrite contains particles of valuable metal. Very often the shine of the mineral is mistaken for real gold.
Gold mining has remained unchanged for thousands of years. But there are options
Plant for the chemical production of gold from ores
In the past, gold was mainly mined by panning , a modified ancient method. Previously, this was done in gold-bearing rivers, collecting sand and washing it under the pressure of water.
Today, gold-bearing ore is raised to the surface, crushed (carefully so as not to see the nuggets) and processed in a stream of water. Minerals with a density less than gold (which is almost all the minerals in the earth's crust) are washed away, and the metal is concentrated in a heavy fraction of sand called concentrate.
A dredge that industrially washes gold-bearing sand
In addition, chemical methods for obtaining gold from minerals with low element content have become widespread. It is also suitable for tightly bound particles of basic gold.
Amalgamation has been known since the 1st century BC thanks to work in the deposits of modern Spain. This method involves mixing gold-bearing rock with mercury, collecting the amalgam and then separating the metals.
In Africa, gold is still mined using mercury today. With bare hands
Cyanidation involves dissolving gold from rocks using hydrocyanic acid, air and water. It has limited use and produces metal with many impurities, but in some cases there is no alternative.
Regeneration is carried out by the action of a 10% alkali solution on solutions of gold salts, followed by precipitation of refined gold onto aluminum from a hot solution. Complex and expensive method.
How to find a diamond deposit
The diamond industry has one big problem. At one time, exploration of deposits was carried out in secret. That is why not all methods for determining their occurrence are still known. Of course, there are modern methods, but those who do this are still in no hurry to share their secrets, since there is a lot of money at stake.
The greatest likelihood of finding diamonds is in the area of volcanoes that have been extinct for a long time. It is there that a “natural laboratory” is often created, in which there will be all the conditions for growing these minerals and delivering them to the surface. Diamonds can also be found in the area of river beds that carry igneous rocks. Much attention should also be paid to meteorites, where diamonds are often found at their fall sites.
This formation of SU-30 and MiG-29 aerobatic teams is called the “Cuban Diamond” by Russian Knights and Swifts. The word “diamond” emphasizes the entire value of the figure.
Without gold there is no economy, gadgets and tanks
The gold standard was abolished. But the role of gold in the economy has increased
Everyone knows that jewelry is made from gold with the addition of other metals (pure gold is too soft to hold its shape), and that savings can be invested in its “virtual bars”.
Many people know that gold was the basis of the world's banking system until the transition to a single conventional unit was made - the dollar, in which today the main mutual settlements are made in the international arena.
But the main importance of gold in the 20th and 21st centuries often escapes attention. Gold is an excellent conductor, resistant to most oxidizing agents, and therefore does not lose its electrical properties.
Gold-plated radio components were previously used in military equipment. Now - in all high-precision
Therefore, contacts for especially critical devices were made and continue to be made from it. They cover boards, connectors, and even add them to wires to ensure their operation.
Experts estimate that the iPhone contains about 30 mg of gold, most of which is found in the contact pads of the circuit boards. And this number has not changed for many years.
More importantly, gold is used as targets in the manufacture of various radiation sources: on them, accelerated particles abruptly stop for the subsequent production of others sought in the experiment.
Contrary to the sneers around audiophiles, in a number of schemes there is no alternative to gold: it can only be replaced by more expensive and difficult to process rare earth metals, such as palladium, iridium, and platinum.
Most often, extracting gold from devices is not difficult, but tedious. But almost chemically pure
Silver is not so easy to solder and is much more sensitive to aggressive environments. It also has certain electrochemical properties that do not allow the use of “Argentum” in high-precision technology due to changes in the parameters of the material.
The conventional Record tube TV from the last century contained up to 100 milligrams of gold and about 2.5 grams of silver. More accurate military equipment or professional measuring instruments - even more.
Is the gold mining business profitable: the main pros and cons
The clear advantages include:
the process is interesting, not very expensive in terms of time and money;
as you gain experience, the process will become simple and automatic;
the costs are paid off.
The disadvantages include:
increased danger due to working with toxic chemical elements;
to make a good profit you need to find a large number of gold-containing items;
Obtaining a license will take a lot of time and money.
Gold mining is the oldest sphere in the mining industry
Instead of a finale: gold is needed even in space
Israeli satellite covered with gold foil for thermal insulation
Of course, now precious metals are not used in such quantities in household appliances, but every year at least 10% of the total production (approximately 300 tons in 2014) is used for the manufacture of industrial products.
As a result, gold recycling reaches at least a quarter of total production, or 1,100 tons .
In the near future, “gold wings” for spacecraft will be tested - a new type of solar panels coated with thin films of gold, which have increased the efficiency of the panels by 11 times .
Nanofilm needed to make a highly efficient solar cell
Without gold, there will be no star flights, dentures or high-precision electronics.
But the greater the consumption, the greater the production: the day is not far off when mining gold on Earth will become economically ineffective.
And then the first space colonies for the extraction of precious metals will appear on the Moon and Mars, as science fiction writers predicted. The era of interplanetary flights will come, which will be spawned by a new “gold rush”.
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