How do you make a giant gold nugget? Take a vein of quartz, add a few thousand earthquakes

By Christopher Voisey, Research Fellow in the School of Earth, Atmosphere, & Environment, Monash University

Humanity’s fascination with gold stretches back thousands of years. Gold mining is described in ancient Greek and Roman sources, and gold rushes – especially in the 19th century – played a powerful role in shaping the modern world.

The dense, yellow metal is often found in veins of the rocky mineral quartz. This is because the two condense together from hot fluids underground as a result of changes in temperature, pressure and chemistry.

Geologists understand this process quite well, but large gold nuggets have been a bit of a mystery. Gold is only dissolved in natural…

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