Workers Just Discovered a Gold Mine Worth $192 Billion

Many gold veins are millions to billions of years old.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The mythical city of El Dorado may still elude us, but there is somewhere in the world where an entire dragon’s hoard of gold could literally be buried beneath your feet.

The sprawling Dadonggou gold mine, which lies under the Liaoning province of northeast China, would easily lure Smaug out of his lair. Searching for a glimpse of precious metal, workers unearthed a deposit of about 2.9 billion tons of ore containing over 498 tons (996,000 pounds) of pure gold. With the recent upsurge in gold prices that shows no signs of slowing down, this motherlode could be worth at least $192 billion—not quite as much as Elon Musk, but close enough.

Gold surfaced in droves after nearly a thousand government employees explored and drilled for 15 months as part of a project meant to develop the mine. After previously forming a development partnership, China National Gold Group, Liaoning Mineral Geology Group, and the Yingkou Municipal Government now plan to invest about $2.82 billion (20 billion yuan) into boosting the local gold industry by building a massive industrial complex. Funding will cover every phase of this endeavor through 2027, from exploration and mining to facilities for storage, processing, smelting and producing gold jewelry.

 Why are so many veins of gold running through China? Its vast land mass rests on several tectonic plates. Geological activity creates conditions ideal for the formation of the element known as aurum in Latin, which is what gives gold its abbreviation Au. Volcanic activity or magma in Earth’s mantle heats subsurface water, which will then dissolve traces of gold from deep in the crust. Fluid will then seep through fractures in the crust. Exposed to changes in pressure and temperature, dissolved gold will become unstable and crystallize. It will precipitate out of the solution and solidify, accumulating into a solid deposit. Many gold veins are millions to billions of years old.

Gold also occurs in fluids that quartz crystallizes from. Quartz is piezoelectric, meaning mechanical stress forces it to generate an electric charge. This explains why forces from earthquakes can produce gold. When pressure levels plummet low enough, water evaporates quickly from mineral solutions, and minerals such as quartz crystallize. Earthquakes exert intense stress on quartz, which responds by releasing piezoelectric discharge that can deposit gold nanoparticles from a solution. Veins will keep amassing more gold as the process repeats.

 This is the largest gold deposit found in China since 1949, with the second-largest being another underground deposit geologists discovered last year, which was hiding an estimated $83 billion worth of gold. The Ministry of Natural Resources is confident that Dadonggou could be the beginning of a massive and profitable production base that could make China a leader in the gold industry. It closely trails Russia and Australia currently.

“The mine’s more than 1,000 tons of reserves will significantly secure national gold strategic reserves,” CPC Shenyang municipal Party school professor Wang Yan told China Daily. “Its fully integrated industrial chain from production to sales will greatly influence the gold industry in China, enhancing its competitiveness in the global market.”

Maybe this is the El Dorado we’ve been seeking all along.

 Courtesy: www.msn.com