Can gold and silver be created?

Astronomers decode nuclear recipe for precious metal forged in supernovae. It’s long been known that earthly metals like gold and silver were forged in supernova explosions, but the metals’ exact origins have been shrouded in mystery. Now a new study has identified the unique nuclear recipe for silver in space.

Can silver be created from other elements?

The metal is found in the Earth’s crust in the pure, free elemental form (“native silver”), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.

Can platinum be created?

Today, platinum is still extracted using a technique similar to that developed by Wollaston. Samples containing platinum are dissolved in aqua regia, are separated from the rest of the solution and byproducts, and are melted at very high temperatures to produce the metal.

How are gold and platinum formed?

For the first time, astronomers have detected a neutron-star collision. Gravitational waves heard by two detectors pinpointed the source to a galaxy 130 million light-years away. The collision produced a radioactive “kilonova” that forged hundreds of Earths’ worth of platinum, gold, silver, and other atoms.

Can you make gold from other elements?

Yes, gold can be created from other elements. Gold is the chemical element with 79 protons in each atomic nucleus. Every atom containing 79 protons is a gold atom, and all gold atoms behave the same chemically.

Can gold be produced artificially?

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. Every atom containing 79 protons is a gold atom, and all gold atoms behave the same chemically.

Does silver react with gold?

Gold and Silver atoms interact with one another to form reasonably strong metallic bonds, but surprisingly they have almost no chemical interaction with atmosphere.

Are platinum and gold found together?

Sources for ore rocks often exist in areas of stream flow in the form of placer deposits. In South America, pre-Columbian civilizations found platinum intermixed with gold in river deposits. The largest platinum deposits reside in Russia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with smaller deposits in Canada and the United States.

How platinum is created?

The metal is formed when minerals are eroded from their original spot and then carried by water somewhere else (this is called stream bed mining or alluvial mining). Workers sift through the sand or mud looking for gold, diamonds or platinum. Nowadays, platinum is more likely to be mined as ore from deep underground.

Can gold be recreated?

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.

Is it possible to make gold from other elements?

Yes, gold can be created from other elements. But the process requires nuclear reactions, and is so expensive that you currently cannot make money Answers provided by Dr. Christopher S. Baird Recent Questions Biology Chemistry Earth Science Health Physics Society Space Can gold be created from other elements?

How is gold made from platinum?

Usually gold is created from platinum, which has one less proton than gold, or from mercury, which has one more proton than gold. Bombarding a platinum or mercury nucleus with neutrons can knock off an neutron or add on a neutron, which through natural radioactive decay can lead to gold.

Where do we get the particles from which we can create gold?

We can get such particles either from radioactive decay, from nuclear reactions in a reactor, from the acceleration of slow particles, or from a mix of these techniques. For example, Sherr, Bainbridge, and Anderson created gold in 1941by shooting neutrons at mercury.

Is it possible to make gold by adding or removing protons?

Or even better, we can remove one proton from mercury (which has 80) or add one proton to platinum (which has 78) in order to make gold. The process is simple in principle but hard to do in practice. Adding or removing protons from a nucleus are types of nuclear reactions. As such, no series of chemical reactions can ever create gold.