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When it comes to precious metals, gold is king. Sure, it isn\u2019t the most valuable in terms of price per ounce, but it is easily tradable, verifiable, and it has a long history of being used as money throughout the Earth. To make it even better, there are more uses for gold today than ever before since it is an essential component of electronics, dentistry, and a myriad of other things.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, you may be excited to learn that gold is leaking out of the Earth\u2019s core and up to the surface. In fact, Gold is just one of many precious and rare metals that seem to be making their way up from the depths of our planet to the surface. Most of the time, they are pushed up into the oceans where they may form islands such as Hawaii, which is where this discovery was made.<\/p>\n
The researchers published a study<\/a> in the journal Nature that looked at how and why these metals are moving up from the core of the Earth. Nils Messling is a geochemist in Gottingun University\u2019s Department of Geochemistry and the lead author of the paper. In a statement<\/a> about their findings, he said:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the first results came in, we realised that we had literally struck gold! Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth\u2019s mantle above.\u201d<\/p>\n Shutterstock<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just important because of the value of gold and other precious metals, though. Nils goes on to explain:<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings not only show that the Earth\u2019s core is not as isolated as previously assumed. We can now also prove that huge volumes of super-heated mantle material \u2013 several hundreds of quadrillion metric tonnes of rock \u2013 originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth\u2019s surface to form ocean islands like Hawai\u2019i.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning more about this exchange of material between the core of the planet, its surface, and, in all likelihood, the other layers as well is necessary for many things. While more research is certainly required, one can easily see how this type of data could help with things like mining, predicting earthquakes, accessing water, and much much more.<\/p>\n Forrest Horton is a geochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the lead scientist on the team. He said:<\/p>\n \u201cWe know very little about Earth\u2019s core, other than that it exists. Traditionally, the core and outer layers of our planet (mantle and crust) were presumed to be geochemically isolated (i.e., material does not transfer back and forth). Increasingly, scientists have been challenging this notion.\u201d<\/p>\n Shutterstock<\/p>\n This study is one of the first that present proof showing that there is a transfer of material between the various layers.<\/p>\n As more study is done, experts will have to revise their understanding of how the Earth evolved and what its future may look like.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n