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Genuine question for an outsider: would this imply that gold can be created? My memories from the last chemistry class I had, I clearly remember my teacher demonstrating philosopher stone ( aka changing materials in gold ) was feasible.
So what you are saying is that fool's gold isn't totally foolish.
It loves mercury too which is also toxic. Interesting.
It loves mercury too which is also toxic. Interesting.
But mercury-gold amalgam, maybe different chemistry at play?
It also alloys easily, i.e. it is dissolved, with other liquid metals, e.g. silver, copper, indium etc., but that is less obvious than with mercury, because those metals must first be heated to great temperatures, to become liquid, before dissolving gold.
The relation with arsenic is different. It is an affinity between ionic gold and arsenic, not between metallic gold and arsenic.
The gold ions are very big, among the biggest metallic ions. Because of that, the gold ions have great affinity only for some big anions (negative ions), i.e. for the ions of arsenic or of tellurium, which have approximately the same size.
This is in contrast with the smaller ions of silver and copper, which have great affinity with the smaller anions of sulfur.
It is well known that the gold ions have the greatest affinity for the anions of the size of arsenic and tellurium. Tellurium has an even greater affinity for gold than arsenic, but tellurium is extremely rare at the surface of the Earth. Due to the rarity of tellurium, even if minerals with gold and tellurium are well known they are less frequently found than those were gold is associated with arsenic.
While the maximal affinity of gold with tellurium and arsenic has been well known, this research has elucidated details of the mechanism how this creates arsenical minerals rich in gold, which may help in the prospection for such minerals.
Because gold is normally much more scarce in the environment than arsenic and than other metals with which arsenic combines easily, the minerals with arsenic and gold are seldom straightforward combinations of arsenic and gold, but as explained in the article, gold infiltrates arsenides of other metals (usually of iron, whose arsenide is the most abundant).
It loves mercury too which is also toxic. Interesting.
If you have lots of gold, have your food tested for arsenic.
Genuine question for an outsider: would this imply that gold can be created? My memories from the last chemistry class I had, I clearly remember my teacher demonstrating philosopher stone ( aka changing materials in gold ) was feasible.
The processes involved are so expensive to do that in terms of cost it doesn't really matter what you are using as the source material, and the way gold is very resistant to corrosion is useful for using as a target in experiments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But mercury-gold amalgam, maybe different chemistry at play?
Metallic gold alloys easily with mercury, so it can be dissolved by mercury. It also alloys easily, i.e. it is dissolved, with other liquid metals, e.g. silver, copper, indium etc., but that is less obvious than with mercury, because those metals must first be heated to great temperatures, to become liquid, before dissolving gold. The relation with arsenic is different. It is an affinity between ionic gold and arseni…
Genuine question for an outsider: would this imply that gold can be created? My memories from the last chemistry class I had, I clearly remember my teacher demonstrating philosopher stone ( aka changing materials in gold ) was feasible.
Nope, this doesn’t create gold, just helps existing gold accumulate in certain conditions. Actual gold creation requires nuclear reactions, which are technically possible but not practical.
Gold could be made by neutron capture on Hg-196. This is a rare isotope, so doing so would require two things: cheap neutrons, and a cheap way to enrich that isotope.
Helion's FRC scheme could provide the first if operated on DD (even if just at engineering breakeven). As for the latter, there's a scheme that's been proposed for mercury isotope separation that exploits the change in magnetic moment of mercury atoms when they are optically excited. This would use radiation from a mercury lamp that itself uses isotopically separated mercury to produce radiation that would selectively excite just that isotope, and steer the atoms in a beam using a magnetic track.
(This isotope separation technique has been proposed as a way to make fluorescent lights more efficient by reducing UV photon trapping in mercury vapor.)
The world's mercury production is low enough and this isotope rare enough that this wouldn't affect gold prices.
With this sympathy between gold and arsenic discovered, we’re one step closer to the philosopher’s stone.