All About Gold Nuggets

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

Impassive statistics show that at least 97% of all gold collected on Earth is taken from primary deposits. It is a stable and reliable source of "despicable" and at the same time fantastically attractive metal. It is dominated by a mineral mixed with other ores and waste rock. To get that very gold, you have to carry out 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 it is highly valued by amateur prospectors. There are relatively few impurities in such finds.

It is difficult to say exactly what a nugget of gold looks like in nature. Geometry, dimensions and weight can vary greatly. The most valuable are specimens weighing from 1 to 100 kg. Even larger nuggets are occasionally 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 experts cannot clearly answer how exactly such mineral formations appear. In the past, gold miners (both mine workers 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 ground and from the groundwater saturated with minerals.

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

Mineralogical studies have made it possible to find out that gold in nature initially forms in V-shaped formations. Therefore, during the initial formation and location of the metal, the richest structures of the veins turned out to be at the very surface or very shallow. Gradually, a significant amount of the original sediment 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 a few remains are found.

Another important circumstance was established - large nuggets are formed not only in ore veins, but also in small lateral veins located at different distances from the main ore body.These streaks appear to be natural filters capable of trapping gold-laden mineral solutions. When solutions flow through the wings, they deposit the metal, which forms native structures over time.

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

Experienced prospectors prefer to search for native gold in the oxbows and in the former river beds, which have dried up over time. But such a reference point is not sufficient. The most likely locations for ingots meet the following criteria:

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

Alas, there are no places suitable for searching for gold bars in the European part of Russia. But in Siberia (mainly in the forest zone) the chances of success are many times greater. Also worth visiting in search of nuggets:

• Yakutia;
• the 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 officially found nugget is Holterman plate... It was found almost 150 years ago in a quartz mine in Australia. The total mass of the stone was 250 kg, and 93 kg fell on pure precious metal, the length was 1.4 m. It has long been impossible to see the Holterman slab. It was melted down and processed.

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

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

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

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

If we focus on reliably preserved specimens, then the most difficult turns out to be 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 the gold inclusions weigh more than 52 kg.

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

Earlier, in 1980, an ingot weighing 27.66 kg was found near the Australian city of Kingauer. Kevin Hillier stumbled upon him. The stone got a name "Hand of Faith" because it looks like a palm. Curiously, this is the largest specimen of native gold found with 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 "Jewels of the crown" is 16.4 kg. This is a sample of crystalline gold that was inside a quartz mass. To remove quartz, hydrofluoric acid was used. "Jewel of the crown"

Our country is very rich in gold deposits. At the same time, it is believed that medium and small placers are more common. The Russian Precious Triangle is recognized as the largest specimen of domestic origin. The nugget was found in the Urals (or rather, in its southern part) back in 1842.

V 1895 another find was made - its weight reached 31 kg. So far, for all the subsequent time, it has not been 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 discovered a gold-bearing stone with a total weight of 25.9 kg. Excluding quartz, the mass of the sample is 16.3 kg. The discovery of the largest Yakut ingot (9.6 kg, 0.192x0.153x0.09 m) is dated 1945 year.

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

Unusual and form "Rabbit ears" found in the Urals. The ingot was documented at the beginning of 1935; it was dug in a large mine that had been operating for at least 110 years. The prospector came across "Rabbit Ears" already in the process of preparing the mine for conservation. The weight of the only one is 3.3 kg, and it really resembles the head of a rodent with elongated ears. The authorship of the discovery belongs to Peter Simonov.

Here are a few more finds:

• Camel (Kolyma mine, 1947, 9.3 kg);
• "Horse Head" (Ural, 1936, 13.7 kg);
• "Big perforated" (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 is:

• goes to jewelry;
• melted down into gold coins;
• used for exhibition purposes;
• used for advertising;
• deposited in private collections.

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