All About Gold Nuggets

Nature has prepared for man a huge mass of surprises and even secrets. Yes, there is nothing mystical or mysterious in them, but the attractiveness of natural diversity does not weaken from this. The mineral world also hides many secrets. It is useful and instructive to learn, for example, all about gold nuggets.

Impartial statistics indicate that at least 97% of all gold collected on Earth is selected from primary deposits. This is a stable and reliable source of "despicable" and at the same time fantastically attractive metal. Mineral mixed with other ores and waste rock prevails there. To get the same gold, you have to spend a lot of additional manipulations.

But a gold nugget should be recognized as a real masterpiece of the geological world. Native gold is quite rare. And that is why amateur miners are highly appreciated by him. There are relatively few impurities in such finds.

It is difficult to say exactly what a gold nugget looks like in nature. The geometry, dimensions and mass can vary greatly. The most valuable are specimens weighing from 1 to 100 kg. Occasionally, even larger nuggets are found. But these are already truly unique finds, and each of them has its own name.

The appearance of native gold occurs deep in the bowels of the earth. This takes a very long time. Even specialists cannot clearly answer exactly how such mineral formations appear. In the past, gold miners (both those working in mines and prospectors) believed that nuggets “grow” in the ground.The essence of this assumption is that small fragments of gold, separated from the ore vein, “attract” small particles directly from the earth and from mineral water-saturated groundwater.

At the next stage, such particles grow together. As a result, very large nuggets appear that are so valued. But this, undoubtedly, beautiful version “does not fight” with objective facts. And those confirmations that gold miners have offered in the past are disproved by experts today. So, the fact that large native gold is not found in the veins cannot be considered evidence of a lack of connection between these phenomena.

Mineralogical studies have revealed that gold in nature is initially formed in V-shaped formations. Therefore, during the initial formation and arrangement of the metal, the richest structures of the veins appeared near the surface or very shallow. Gradually, a significant amount of the initial deposits is completely eroded. Experts believe that about 2/3 of the upper part of any gold-bearing formation has long been destroyed, and now only single remains are found.

It was also established another important circumstance - large nuggets are formed not only in ore veins, but also in small lateral veins, remote at different distances from the main ore body.Such streaks turn out to be natural filters capable of capturing mineral solutions saturated with gold. When solutions flow through the wings, they just deposit the metal, which forms native structures after some time.

The V-theory has many practical confirmations, and in the 21st century, no geologist will even seriously consider the "growth theory".

Prospectors with experience prefer to look for native gold in old men and in the former river channels, which have dried up over time. But such a landmark is not enough. The most probable locations of the ingots correspond to the following criteria:

• near the joints of tectonic structures;
• in a certain area there were volcanoes;
• gold placers or gold-bearing primary ores have been discovered earlier;
• within a radius of 50-80 km there are no silver deposits.

Alas, in the European part of Russia there are no places suitable for the search for gold bullion. But in Siberia (mainly in the forest zone) the chances of success are many times greater. It is also worth a visit in search of nuggets:

• Yakutia
• Kolyma river basin;
• Amur region;
• Krasnoyarsk region;
• Australia
• Ghana
• Indonesia
• Norway
• Canada (very large ingots were found there in the past).

You can often hear that the largest of the officially found nuggets is Holterman plate. It was found almost 150 years ago at a quartz mine in Australia. The total mass of the stone was 250 kg, and 93 kg accounted for pure precious metal, the length was 1.4 m. It has long been impossible to see the Holterman slab. It was remelted and recycled.

Mineralogical classification refers to them only pure metal. The find of 1872 is a fragment of a vein, the gold parts of which are connected by a quartz massif. The fame of the instance is due to the fact that the photographer who found it immediately took a lot of pictures scattered around the world.

A little earlier, in 1869, they found nugget "Desired Stranger" weighing 71 kg.

The "welcome stranger" literally "was lying on the road." Prospectors stumbled upon a lump when they tried to pull out their cart stuck in the mud. Since no suitable power was found at the mine, the stone had to be divided into parts and weighed them one at a time.

The largest nugget in California was discovered by digging a grave. The find was named after the buried - Oliver Martin a block weighing 36 kg was sold for 22,700 dollars.

If we focus on reliably preserved specimens, the most difficult Pepita Canaa. This golden cobblestone was found in 1983 near the Brazilian village of Serra Pelada, in the state of Para. The find is kept by the museum of the national central bank. The total mass is 60.82 kg, and gold inclusions weigh more than 52 kg.

Despite the exhaustion of the gold rush, periodically find more new ingots. So, in September 2018, Henry Dol discovered another ingot at a nickel deposit Beta Hunt in Western Australia. The find was made in the process of banal blasting. The largest of the remaining pieces after the explosion "pulled" about 90 kilograms, of which the inclusion of gold amounted to 65.2 kg. Also found a fragment weighing 60 kg (inside it was 45.3 kg of gold). What happened to the nuggets next is not exactly known.

Before, in 1980, an ingot weighing 27.66 kg was found near the Australian city of Kingauer. Kevin Hillier came across him. The stone got a name “Hand of faith” because it looks like a palm. It is curious that this is the largest instance of native gold found using a metal detector. Its dimensions are 0.09x0.47x0.2 m. The “Hand of Faith” can be seen at the entrance to one of the Las Vegas casinos.

Another find was made in 1992 in California. Weight "Crown Jewels" is 16.4 kg. This is a sample of crystalline gold inside a quartz mass. Hydrochloric acid was used to remove quartz. "Crown Jewel"

Our country is very rich in gold deposits. It is believed at the same time that medium and small placers are more common. The largest example of domestic origin recognized Russian precious triangle. The nugget was found in the Urals (or rather, in its southern part) back in 1842.

IN 1895 another find was made - its mass reached 31 kg. So far, for all subsequent time, it was not possible to find gold nuggets weighing 20 kg or more, but dozens of specimens weighing 5-19.9 kg are known. A in 1881 in the Bodaibo river basin found a gold-bearing stone with a total weight of 25.9 kg. Excluding quartz, the mass of the sample is 16.3 kg. The search for the largest Yakut ingot (9.6 kg, 0.192x0.153x0.09 m) dates from 1945 year.

But not always the glory of the nugget is associated with its record size. So, in the Diamond Fund exhibited "Mephistopheles" weighing only about 0.02 kg. However, new visitors flock to him all the time. The stone resembles the very image of Mephistopheles, as people are used to perceiving it. A number of expert examinations irrefutably proved that this is an undeniably natural product, without any human involvement.

Unusual and form "Hare ears" found in the Urals. The ingot was documented at the beginning of 1935; it was dug at a large mine that had been working for at least 110 years. Prospector stumbled upon the "Hare ears" in the process of preparing the mine for conservation. The weight is 3.3 kg, and it really resembles a rodent's head with outstretched ears. The authorship of the discovery belongs to Peter Simonov.

Here are a few more finds:

• “Camel” (Kolyma mine, 1947, 9.3 kg);
• “Horse's head” (Ural, 1936, 13.7 kg);
• "Large hole" (3 kg, found about 300 years ago - one of the earliest in our country).

Everything is quite obvious. Native gold is not used for technical and medical purposes, it:

• goes for jewelry;
• smelted into gold coins;
• used for exhibition purposes;
• used for advertising;
• put off in private collections.

For more interesting information on gold nuggets, see the next video.