It's raining Gold in Antarctica

What if I were to tell you I know a place where gold is literally blowing out of the ground and raining from the sky?

There is such a place!

But before you start packing your bags, I should tell you that it’s in Antarctica.

The Ross Sea is more of a deep bay in Antarctica,  about 840 miles from the South Pole. In the Ross Sea, you’ll find Ross Island. And on Ross Island stands Mt. Erebus.

Mt. Erebus is an active volcano. It’s not so much erupting as bubbling. Inside the volcano sits a permanent lake of blazing, molten rock. This hot lava emits a lot of gases. Mixed with the steam bubbling out of Mt. Erebus are microscopic particles of crystalline gold.

Mt. Erebus has been belching gold for decades. In 1991, researchers estimated that the volcano spews around 80 grams (A little over 2.5 troy ounces) of microscopic gold dust into the sky every single day. That comes to about 900 ounces of gold every year. At today’s gold price, we’re talking about some $3.6 million worth of gold.

Good luck collecting it, though.

As I mentioned, the gold is microscopic. As it blows into the atmosphere, wind currents carry the particles as far as 1,000 kilometers from the volcano before it falls to the ground like a soft rain.

It’s not unusual to find gold in volcanic emissions. For instance, scientists have detected gold around a volcano in Hawaii. However, Mt. Erebus is the only volcano known to spew high levels of crystalline gold into the air at this volume.

As a Yahoo News article put it, it makes sense.

“A volcano is basically a hole in Earth's crust, through which molten material from deep below the ground seethes upward.”

There are thousands of miles of nearly impenetrable rock between the core and the Earth’s surface, known as the mantle. It extends from about 22 miles below the Earth’s surface and crust to the core. The boundary between Earth’s center and the mantle lies about 1,800 miles deep.

The Earth’s molten outer core holds about 99.9 percent of the planet’s gold and other precious metals. Scientists estimate there is as much as 1.6 quadrillion tonnes of gold locked up in the Earth’s center. That’s enough gold to coat the entire surface of the Earth with a 20-inch-thick layer of the yellow metal.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to mine the core; however, Mother Nature sometimes pushes some of that gold to the surface.

As hot as lava is, it can’t vaporize the yellow metal. The boiling point of pure gold is far hotter than volcanic temperatures. That means gold coming out of the Earth is generally in a liquid state. Scientists think gold hitches a ride to the surface in volatile chlorine- or sulfur-bearing compounds that exist in hot volcanic gases.

The crystalline structure of the gold blowing out of Mt. Erebus is unique. According to Yahoo News, “Under an electron microscope, the particles appeared as intricate, faceted, almost perfectly geometric crystals rather than irregular specks, some measuring up to about 60 micrometers across.”

One theory is that under the environmental conditions around Mt. Erebus, gold crystallizes out of these chlorine and sulfur compounds as the gases cool. However, these compounds typically only contain small amounts of gold, and it is unclear how the large crystals can form.

Another theory is that the gold gradually deposits in a crust on the surface of the lava lake before being blown aloft by rising gases.

As Yahoo News put it, “Something about Mount Erebus – whether it's the chemistry, the ambient temperature, the geology, or something else – appears to give it a unique ability to sprinkle the snow with gold dust like a mischievous pixie.”

I’d be OK with sending that mischievous pixie my way!