About 244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date (187,000 metric tons historically produced plus current underground reserves of 57,000 metric tons). Most of that gold has come from just three countries: China, Australia, and South Africa.
Gold is one of the few elements to occur in a natural state. It is found in veins and alluvial deposits. About 1500 tonnes of gold are mined each year. About two-thirds of this comes from South Africa and most of the rest from Russia.
In geographic terms gold is found all over the globe except in Antarctica. Today the three biggest individual mines are Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa, Irian Jaya in Indonesia and Carlin Trend, northeast Nevada. If Nevada were a country, it would rank fourth in the world in terms of total gold production.
Gold is primarily found as the pure, native metal. Sylvanite and calaverite are gold-bearing minerals. Gold is usually found embedded in quartz veins, or placer stream gravel. It is mined in South Africa, the USA (Nevada, Alaska), Russia, Australia and Canada.
Gold originates from the depths of space, formed during supernova explosions billions of years ago. It arrived on Earth through meteorite bombardment and became embedded in the planet's crust over geological time scales.
But all that gold is in Jupiter's center, completely inaccessible. So if you are talking about solar system bodies we could conceivably mine for gold, the answer is probably asteroid Psyche. And richest not just in gold, but in all heavy metals.
Pinpointing the exact timeframe for gold formation is challenging due to the diverse geological processes involved. However, researchers estimate that the entire process - from the formation of gold in supernovae to its deposition in Earth's crust - spanned billions of years.
Gold is found in Archean (rocks older than 2.5 billion years) greenstone belts in Australia, southern Africa, and Canada. Greenstone belts are volcanic-sedimentary sequences, which include ultramafic rocks, dolerite, basalt, chert, sandstone, shale, tuff, banded iron-formation and other rock types.
Switzerland - In Switzerland, gold purity is measured in fineness, with 999.9 fineness gold being the most pure. Switzerland is also home to some of the world's most renowned gold refiners and manufacturers of luxury watches and jewellery.
Owning gold is perfectly legal in many countries, including the United States.
Nevada is the leading gold-producing state in the nation, in 2018 producing 5,581,160 troy ounces (173.6 tonnes), representing 78% of US gold and 5.0% of the world's production.
You want to look for signs of gold like black sands, pyrite and small quartz, as these are all usually good indicators of gold being in the area. Garnets may also be present, often appearing in many shades of colors including red, orange and pink!
The Pepita Canaã is the world's largest gold nugget and was found in the Serra Pelada – the 'Naked Mountain' – in Brazil in 1983. With a gross weight of 60.82kg and containing 52.33kg of gold, this equates to 1,682 troy ounces and would be worth $2,999,510.60 based on metal value alone at today's gold price.
Orogen Gold Deposits
These gold deposits lie at a depth between 1200 and 4500 metres and were created due to mountain formation. They exist in marine sediments (marine deposits) or metamorphic rock (created deep in the earth's crust by high temperature and pressure).
Both 24 karat and 999.9 fineness are generally accepted as pure gold. Despite this, in truth it is impossible to produce 100% pure gold based on current technical limits. Removing any tiny molecules of other material is not achievable, and would prove extremely expensive and difficult to even prove.
Raw gold forms in veins of granite, quartz, iron ore, or sulfide. It's brassy yellow, glows in light, and can be scratched with a fingernail.
Mount Erebus, one of the world's most active volcanoes, spews around 80 grams of gold into the frigid air of Antarctica daily, IFLScience reported. The volcano, one of Antarctica's 138 active ones, reportedly emits pockets of gas containing crystallized gold each day, valued at almost $6,000.
It was found that silt and clay contain much higher amounts of gold than does sand. Parent materials which have under- gone one cycle of soil formation seem to contain gold in the silt in the resistant metallic form.
Yes, gold can be created from other elements. But the process requires nuclear reactions, and is so expensive that you currently cannot make money by selling the gold that you create from other elements.
The bulk of production comes from the Cortez and Carlin Trends, where mines extract low grade gold from a particular type of mineral deposit, the Carlin Type Gold deposit. It was the discovery and technology used for processing these “invisible” deposits that would turn Nevada into the golden powerhouse of production.