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(LiveScience) Scientists have discovered exactly how earthquakes trigger quartz into forming large gold nuggets — finally solving a mystery that's puzzled researchers for decades.
Gold naturally forms in quartz — the second-most abundant mineral in Earth's crust after feldspar. But unlike other types of gold deposits, those found in quartz often cluster into giant nuggets.
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These nuggets float in the middle of what geologists call quartz veins, which are cracks in quartz-rich rocks that periodically get pumped full of hydrothermal fluids from deep within the crust.
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"Gold forms in quartz all the time," said Chris Voisey, a geologist at Monash University in Australia and the lead author of a new study published Monday (Sept. 2) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"The thing that's weird is really, really large gold nugget formation. We didn't know how that worked — how you get a large volume of gold to mineralize in one discreet little place," Voisey told Live Science. More:
- Earthquakes can trigger quartz into forming giant gold nuggets, study finds (LiveScience)
- What world's largest rock engravings may mean (Newsweek)
- Nature Geoscience journal report by LiveScience.com via msn.com, 9/2/24; Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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