Source of Gold

When we consider the sources of gold only in this planet, it seems necessary to study the most recent geological history of Earth. Scientists believe that the Earth is an extremely solid mass, which becomes denser in its center every time.

It is believed that the gold found on the surface of the Earth and in its outer layer, once inside the Earth’s burning mass and which was pushed to the surface due to volcanic activity.

In the form of hard rock gold generally is associated to the quartz in a form of veins that outstand through the common mountain rock, also determined by the geologists as “country rock.”

In the beginnings of gold-mining, it was mostly believed that these quartz veins / gold were some time pushed from the inferior core of the planet in the form of volcanic magma. Under this premise, it was thought that the seam would be richer if it came from the deepest of the earth. However, this is not the case.

More recently, it has been discovered that most parts of the quartz veins were not formed in the same period as the “country rock” that surrounds it, but later. The cooling off of the outer layer of the Earth, that is the “country rock”, apparently caused many cracks from where extremely hot vapors and gases escape from the melted core of the planet. These water vapors also carried minerals that also broke out from these cracks, being one of the predominant minerals silica, which forms quartz. Water vapors also brought other minerals with it, from which gold, silver, iron and platinum are only a few.

Silica has singular characteristics that are unique. One of these is that it tends to catch heavier elements when they go over or through it as particles. So while water vapors pushed heavier minerals upwards to the Earth’s surface through these cracks. Many times these elements would combine with the silica, which would later turn into vein form structures.