What makes gold

Because gold is so dense In fact, if you melted all the gold mined to date, you'd wind up with a cube about 60 feet across! Nevertheless, gold accounts for a few parts per billion of the mass of the Earth's crust.

While it's not economically feasible to extract much gold, there are about 1 million tons of gold in the top kilometer of the Earth's surface. The abundance of gold in the mantle and core is unknown, but it greatly exceeds the amount in the crust. Attempts by alchemists to turn lead or other elements into gold were unsuccessful because no chemical reaction can change one element into another. Chemical reactions involve a transfer of electrons between elements, which may produce different ions of an element, but the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom is what defines its element.

All atoms of gold contain 79 protons, so the atomic number of gold is Making gold isn't as simple as directly adding or subtracting protons from other elements. The most common method of changing one element into another transmutation is to add neutrons to another element.

Neutrons change the isotope of an element, potentially making the atoms unstable enough to break apart via radioactive decay. Japanese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka first synthesized gold by bombarding mercury with neutrons in While transmuting mercury into gold is easiest, gold can be made from other elements—even lead! Soviet scientists accidentally turned the lead shielding of a nuclear reactor into gold in and Glenn Seabord transmuted a trace of gold from lead in Thermonuclear weapon explosions produce neutron captures similar to the r-process in stars.

While such events are not a practical way to synthesize gold, nuclear testing did lead to the discovery of the heavy elements einsteinium atomic number 99 and fermium atomic number Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. How is gold formed? There are two main theories about how gold is originally formed, both involving stars.

One involves the explosion of supernova stars and the resulting nuclear fusion creating atoms of gold, and the other, the collision of neutron stars that results in a gamma-ray burst, one of the most powerful explosions possible.

In August , the presence of heavier elements, including gold, was detected using gravitational wave detectors during the first observation of the collision of two neutron stars. What these two events have in common is the presence of nuclear energy, which is required to combine lighter atoms into heavier ones. Where is gold found? In its natural form, it is found deep in the layers of the earth where it is transported by water, molten lava and volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.

Gold is one of the most highly-desired and useful metals in the world. Not only can it be beautifully shaped and sculpted, the precious yellow metal conducts electricity and does not tarnish. These qualities make it the metal of choice for the industrial, medical and technology industries, just to name a few.

Arguably no other metal has been held in higher esteem throughout history, with almost every established culture using gold to symbolise power, beauty, purity and accomplishment. Today, gold still occupies an important place in our culture and society — we use it to make our most prized objects: wedding rings, Olympic medals, money, jewellery, Oscars, Grammys, crucifixes, art and many more. The process is simple in principle but hard to do in practice. Adding or removing protons from a nucleus are types of nuclear reactions.

As such, no series of chemical reactions can ever create gold. Chemical reactions change the number and shape of the electrons in an atom but leave the nucleus of the atom unchanged. The ancient alchemist dream of creating gold by simply reacting chemicals is therefore impossible. You have to use nuclear reactions to create gold.

The difficulty is that nuclear reactions require a lot of energy. The nucleus of a stable atom is very tightly bound together, so it is hard to get anything permanently into or out of the nucleus.