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WONDERS OF EARTH

Why leaves change color in autumn and then fall?

Where is gold coming from?

Gold’s special role in human societies in the past can be easily seen. During antiquity, people not only used gold for creating beautiful objects but also assigned it

main role in their tales and songs. Most of us are familiar with the tale of King Midas who was granted the ability to turn everything he touches into gold.

Gold has always been special for people. It captured our ancestors’ minds the moment they found it. And this fascination and worship are continuing to this day.

The madness for gold did not end up with the beginning of the middle ages. Alchemists tried the seemingly impossible - turn other materials into gold. None of them succeeded. However, today, we can create gold but too inefficiently.

But first, we need to see where Earth's gold is coming from. Counter to the common believes, gold isn't created in our planet’s core. It has an extraterrestrial origin.

Gold and most of Earth's other elements originate in cosmic cataclysms called supernovae. Supernovae are enormous stars that are mostly made up of hydrogen. Under their immense pressure, they can fuse in their cores. When the process fusion takes place, lighter elements like hydrogen and helium, are turned into heavier ones like carbon, and oxygen. But this fusion cannot continue endlessly. When the core starts producing iron and nickel, the energy released in the process is not enough anymore and cannot support the mass of the star. When this happens, the supernova collapses into its center and then bounces back from the rapid release of energy. After the collapse of the star protons and electrons are forced together and create neutrons.

When neutrons start to occur, they are easily captured by the elements from the iron group. After elements like iron get enough neutrons, they can turn into others like silver, gold, led, and uranium.

In normal circumstances, it will take the star forever to fuse such heavy elements, but when this catastrophic explosion happens, these elements are created for seconds. And when created, they are scattered by the explosion on unbelievable distances enhancing other galaxies and forming gas clouds for new stars and planets to be born.

Our planet also received most of its elements this way. And then, they were distributed by geothermal activity.

Today using particle accelerators, we can create gold but only atom by atom bombarding other elements with particles. But if we decide to produce gold, it would take us the age of the whole universe to create only one gram. This process is too slow and expensive and is more of a scientific achievement rather than a money-making machine.

If we reach a point someday when we have mined all the gold on earth, we can look at other places like our oceans or other planets. Scientists estimate that there are around 20 million tons of gold dissolved in the oceans but for now, we cannot extract it in any economy-valuable way. Other planets and asteroids near us also have big metal reserves, and we could see an interstellar gold rush in the future.