Scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery about the origin of gold on our planet. A new study of volcanic rock from deep beneath the Earth’s surface found high concentrations of gold and other precious metals in the mantle and crust. The research revealed that these metals were initially extracted from the Earth’s core, then carried to the surface by convecting magma.
“We realized we had ‘struck gold’ when our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold, is leaking into the Earth’s mantle above,” said Nils Messling, a geochemist at Göttingen University. The study used isotopes of a precious heavy metal called ruthenium to track the source of these metals.
The researchers found significantly higher amounts of a specific ruthenium isotope on Hawaiian islands than in the surrounding mantle. This suggests that all siderophile elements – including gold, palladium, and platinum – are leaking out of the core at an accelerated rate.
“This discovery not only shows that the Earth’s core is not as isolated as previously thought but also reveals huge volumes of superheated mantle material originate from the core-mantle boundary,” said Matthias Willbold, a geochemist at Göttingen University. The research has been published in Nature and sheds new light on the Earth’s internal dynamics.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/earths-core-holds-a-vast-reservoir-of-gold-and-its-leaking-toward-the-surface