Understanding how gold forms is crucial for knowing where to find it and how to extract it sustainably.
The deposit, now on land due to plate tectonic processes, originally formed in a submarine oceanic island arc about 183 million years ago. After analyzing the samples at McGill and the University of Alberta, they found seawater had mixed with ore fluids in the Earth’s crust to form gold.
Clues from soured milk
The findings build on the McGill team’s 2021 discovery that gold nanoparticles combine to form high-grade gold deposits, in a process akin to the way proteins clump together to form curds when milk sours.
Makes sense, sea water is salty, ionization of molten rock in or by the presence of sea water probably works similarly to how salting food as you cook it draws water out of whatever you’re cooking to leave molten gold in place.