The Earth's core contains a huge reserve of gold: it flows to the surface along with magma - research

A new study shows that the core of our planet not only contains incredible amounts of gold, but also "shares" it. Scientists have discovered evidence that precious metals, including gold, leak from the depths of the planet and enter the Earth's crust along with magma. This is reported by UNN with a reference to Nature and Yahoo.

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A new study has found that the core of our planet is a real "reservoir" of gold, which gradually penetrates through the mantle and rises into the Earth's crust.

Geochemists from the University of Göttingen in Germany analyzed isotopes found in volcanic rocks and confirmed that some of the precious metals, including gold, originate in the Earth's core.

When the first results came in, we realized that we had literally stumbled upon gold! Our data suggests that material from the core, including gold, is indeed seeping into the Earth's mantle.

Despite the fact that we can extract gold from the Earth's crust, the amount there is only a tiny fraction of what is concentrated inside the planet. Scientists believe that more than 99% of all Earth's gold is hidden in its metallic core.

This amount, as noted, is enough to cover the entire land with a layer 50 cm thick. Such a distribution of heavy elements has a logical explanation: when the planet was formed, dense metals sank into the depths of the planet through a process called the "iron catastrophe."

Later, meteorites added even more heavy and precious metals to the Earth's crust. But the question remains: what proportion of these heavy metals actually comes from the core, and what proportion is brought from space?

Researchers decided to study this through isotopes of ruthenium, a heavy precious metal. It turned out that ruthenium in the Earth's core has slightly different isotopic proportions than ruthenium in the mantle.

Previously, this difference was too small to be noticed, but Messling's team developed new techniques that made it possible. Analyzing ruthenium from volcanic rocks of the Hawaiian Islands, scientists discovered a significant proportion of the isotope ruthenium-100, which is believed to have formed in the planet's core.

This discovery proves that all siderophilic elements (those that "love iron" and sank into its depths during the formation of the planet) - such as ruthenium, platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold - gradually "leak" from the core to the surface.

Our findings show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as we previously thought. We have proven that huge amounts of superheated material from the mantle, equivalent to hundreds of quadrillion tons, originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the surface, creating volcanic islands like Hawaii.

Although the rate of this "leakage" is very slow, and we will not be able to simply take and extract this gold, the discovery gives us a new understanding of the geological activity of the Earth and, possibly, other rocky planets, the article says. 

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