Core Exit: Go for the Gold

"An Australian researcher says there is enough gold buried deep within the Earth's core to cover the entire land surface of the planet to a depth of half a metre."

According to Professor Bernard Wood, geologist, Macquarie University "more than 99 per cent of the earth's gold is in the core".

(Research published in "Nature")

www.abc.net/au/news/newsitem/200606/S1664312.htm
"Researcher Calculates Gold Within Earth's Core"
by Stephen Pincock for Science Online


Undersea Mining

"...venture capitalists have been tempted by the riches of seafloor mining for manganese, goldand other minerals essential to the burgeoning global economy. Untested mining techniques have kept the seabed mostly intact today."

"The impact of this mining is as unknown as the deep sea fauna itself."

"David Heydon's Nautilus Minerals Inc. secured seabed exploration rights to PNG waters in 1997 and proved up very high grade ores containing copper, gold, silver, and nickel at depths of -1500 meters by deploying underwater robotics."

"We hope that consistent on going scrutiny from the scientific community, and regional environmental management bodies, will introduce some sustainability into this 'frontier' mining enterprise so the same disasterous mistakes made on land---Ok Tedi, Panguna, Misisma---are not made in our Melanesian seas, for which not only the people of Melanesia, but increasingly the world, rely on for their fish."

www.melanesiangeo.org/magazines/MG06_10-15ebook.pdf




[edit on 9-7-2010 by Alethea]

This is very interesting.

How would it tie in with the oil spill? If at all?

reply to post by harryhaller


The Race is On!

"The Largest Gold Rush Ever!"

(David) "Heydon is a veteran Australian prospector and onetime dotcom entreprenuer. He returned to the mining industry five years ago to become CEO of Nautilus Minerals, a new breed of mining company with a head start on what may turn out to be the largest gold rush the world has ever seen.

Nautilus is on track to begin mining the seabed by 2009."

www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/undersea.html


---

Brazil is trying to forge an alliance with African and South American countries to defend the seabed mining rights in the South Atlantic.

Brazil is concerned it could fall behind as leading developed countries race to divvy up the rights to maritime resources in international waters.

The seabed in international waters covers more than 50% of the world's surface.


"The International Seabed Authority, or ISA, created under the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, has already granted eight exploration contracts with rights to two million square km (772,704 sq. mi.) in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, according to Brazil's defense ministry."

www.stabroeknews.com...


Seabed Mining----The Final Frontier!

The costs of this sort of mining would be astronomical I would think - imagine trying to bring up hundreds of tonnes of low-grade ore from 1500 metres down, get it loaded onto ships, and then transport to a land-based mine for processing.

reply to post by cloudbreak



It appears that it is being bank-rolled by a lot of companies in the heavy metal industries.

Anglo-American, the owner of the DeBeers diamond Dynasty is one of the big investors. Also Teck Cominco.

Most of the major land deposits have been exhausted. Producers of iron, steel, and zinc are scrambling to invest because they are afraid their land sources are about to become depleted.

reply to post by cloudbreak


Just a few points:

You assume "low grade", but if i read the OP's link right, we're talking solid gold like it used to be on land? Where you could pick it up.

Also, being underwater, it would weigh almost nothing, so a conventional conveyor belt system would be simple.

I'll say undergroud mining once seemed astronomically expensive and unworkable? And there we are bringing tonnes of low grade ore from almost a kilometre down in places.

This is practically workable, IF the information is sound. That's the big question. If you asked any gold mining companies, they would deny it, of course.

The offshore Diamond Mining has already begun. De Beers is using this SHIP to mine diamonds off of South Africa.

The problem with mining the seafloor is that it requires just as much if not more technology than mining on the moon would require. Depth = Pressure and pressure sure has a knack for finding weakness in equipment.

This new industry will spur a technological push for Deep Sea Submersables.

Well that's just bitchen!
All we need is more reasons for the greedy pieces of work to undermine
our very existence. Thanks for bringing this to light OP. SnF I hope you get applause for this one.

Hopefully this Bernard Wood researcher is into sabotage of the elite.
Though I doubt he is all they would go by.

[edit on 9-7-2010 by randyvs]

reply to post by cloudbreak


Mate, if they can bring up ships and subs using inflatables, they can bring up ore the same way.

Massive inflatables would be able to lift a LOT. Repeat the process as many times as possible in a working day, and your talking huge amounts of ore raised to the surface relatively cheaply and easily.

Originally posted by harryhaller
reply to post by cloudbreak

 

Just a few points:

You assume "low grade", but if i read the OP's link right, we're talking solid gold like it used to be on land? Where you could pick it up.

Also, being underwater, it would weigh almost nothing, so a conventional conveyor belt system would be simple.

I'll say undergroud mining once seemed astronomically expensive and unworkable? And there we are bringing tonnes of low grade ore from almost a kilometre down in places.

This is practically workable, IF the information is sound. That's the big question. If you asked any gold mining companies, they would deny it, of course.

Well it costs roughly $400-600/oz at present to produce gold in conventional mines, and I fail to see how it could be done for cheaper than this by mining the ocean floor.

Gold has never really just been lying around to be picked up, it's always taken hard labour and effort, except for maybe the odd lucky soul coming across a big nugget here and there! I simply don't see a conventional conveyor belt system working underwater sorry, especially at depths of 1500 metres.

He says the gold is presumed to be in the core...I imagine he also means like in molten form. Reaching this, wow...you are talking excruciatingly large amounts of money and technology, before it ever becomes viable.

This looks like a propaganda piece to contain the price of gold possibly to me. I think they will create technology to extract all the gold from sea water itself before it becomes fully viable to bring up ore from kilometres deep in the ocean, and then transport it for processing.

reply to post by spikey


I'm not saying it isn't possible, just not viable at the moment in my limited opinion.

edit: And I don't really agree that moving tonnes and tonnes of ore up to the surface can be done relatively cheaply at all.

You get one oz of gold roughly for every 6 tonnes of ore, say on average depending on the grade. First up, actually having super-strong submersible digging equipment to actually get at it...that's a big feat.

Then bringing up 100s of tonnes a day for a few ounces? And then transporting to a plant onshore? I just can't see it being viable for at least another 20 to 30 years.

Bringing up ships etc using inflatibles costs in the multiple-millions of dollars for such an operation.

[edit on 9-7-2010 by cloudbreak]

Originally posted by cloudbreak
reply to post by spikey

 

I'm not saying it isn't possible, just not viable at the moment in my limited opinion.

An opinion without research is an uneducated guess.


"There is much uncertainty in developing a nascent industry in a new environment."

Nautilis/Placer Dome exploration case study:
www.bren.ucsb.edu/research/documents/VentsThesis.pdf



Also more info here:
esd.lbl.gov/TOUGHsymposium/TOUGHsymposium03/pdfs/WhiteCreightonBixleyKissling.pdf


And here:
www.infomine.com/minesite.asp?site=lihir

[edit on 9-7-2010 by Alethea]

[edit on 9-7-2010 by Alethea]

Good chance the core of the earth contains a lot of Gold and Lead due to it's weight sinking the metal down and it's only major eruptions that bring it up to the surface.

My grandad said we could extract the gold and build steps to the moon but he too was talking out is a$$ on that type of theory and died very poor.

"Geologists have discovered what may be one of the top three gold deposits in the world----the growing gold deposit within the Luise Caldera on Lihir Island in an area of Papua New Guinea."

(hmmm...isn't the Gulf of Mexico rumored to be a caldera also?)

"Geologists estimate if a volcano remains active for roughly 10,000 years as much as 200 tons of gold could accumulate within the volcanoes---a future gold mine in the making.

The volcano's gold, like the gold in Alaska, the Colorado Rockies, and California's Sierra Nevada Range was probably dissolved from crustal rocks by the heat and associated fluids from rising magma beneath the volcano. Water vapor and other gases, charged with dissolved gold, rise from the volcano's subterranean magma chamber and seep upward through the rocks of the volcano, disseminating the precious golden flakes."


An Introduction to Physical Science
Shipman, Wilson, Todd

excerpt from chapter:
Making Gold in an Active Volcano



[edit on 9-7-2010 by Alethea]

Originally posted by Alethea
by Stephen Pincock

how unfortunate...

"The open pit at the Lihir Gold Mine, Papua New Guinea is planned to ultimately reaqch more than 200 metres below sea level. Cooling and depressurization of the geothermal resourceassociated with the gold mineralization is an essential part of the mining operation.

The Lihir Gold Project mineral deposits are located witin the Luise Caldera which is considered the remnant of an extinct volcano. It is open to the north east where it is breached by the sea to form Luise Harbour. Defined gold mineralizations occurs within an area of about 2 by 1.5km.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

Nautilis is working in conjunction with Placer Dome.
Placer Dome is a Canadian gold mining company.

Placer Dome was purchased by Barrick Gold in 2006 and was assimilated into Barrick. Barrick Gold Corp. is the largest pure gold mining company in the world with it's headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

(Is it any wonder the Queen popped in to remind you who gets the fat?)

What is really going on in the Gulf of Mexico caldera?
Is BP covering and taking the fall for someone else?
Is it all going according to plan being first depressurized, then cooled?

Vigilant Shield 2010: Canada's Gold/Determined Dragon

(Dragon is a metaphor for volcano.)

In the same spirit of 'commerce above people and nature' attitude displayed by Mr. "suck it, fishes and birdies" Tourre, of Golddigger Sacks, Mr. Heydon, CEO of Nautilis, both admits and justifies environmental "problems" that will be caused by this corporate rape of the planet.

"China and India are rapidly developing a middle class that's hungry to improve its quality of life. that means millions of new houses laced with miles of copper wiring and acres of corrugated iron roofing. It means TV's, cars, and cell phones flecked with gold and cobalt.

"How do we tell the guy living in a thatched hut that he can't have a new metal roof because its going to cause environmental problems?" Heydon asks. "When we were developing, we didn't care about that, so why should they? It's up to us to pioneer new options."


www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/undersea.html




[edit on 9-7-2010 by Alethea]

Originally posted by Alethea
Cooling and depressurization of the geothermal resource associated with the gold mineralization is an essential part of the mining operation.

Is it all going according to plan being first depressurized, then cooled?

Now you have my full attention.

Vigilant Shield 2010: Canada's Gold/Determined Dragon

More North America based "exercises". I do think you may be onto something.

In answer to cloudbreak:
You use words like "roughly" "average" "limited" "relatively" "tonnes" "ounces" and you seem to know a little about this.

But this is a complete and TOTAL unknown to us. You probably don'tread your bible, you should. When you see the volume of gold that was in circulation call it 5000 years ago, there is no other optio BUT to assume that it was very much more common then. Even here on the highveld prospectors were finding gold nuggets in relatively shallow sand. And that was just the tip of the goldberg.

Originally posted by Alethea

Originally posted by cloudbreak
reply to post by spikey

 

I'm not saying it isn't possible, just not viable at the moment in my limited opinion.

An opinion without research is an uneducated guess.

I stand by what I say, in my opinion it is not viable, and will not be for many many years.

Call it uneducated, but please at least refute what I am saying with cold facts.

[edit on 9-7-2010 by cloudbreak]

reply to post by harryhaller


True I don't read the bible, maybe I should.

I am coming at this perhaps from another angle I guess. I see it as just as just another propaganda piece to cap gold.

Yes, there is money going into the development of this 'new frontier' obviously, but how long until it pays returns? I'd say decades.

I've been trading gold for about 8 years, and prior to that was involved in the industry to some degree anyway.

Periodically you get these type of huge potential schemes pop up - everything from technology to potentially & viably extract the gold from sea water, to combing through beach sand for gold, and dare I say it, the potential to bring back all the gold from an asteroid.

Eventually there may be something to this to make it viable when we have heaps more technology. And when gold is at 10k/ounce.

Right now, I just don't see digging down under the sea as being economical - let alone possible on a large scale - until we have proven, much enhanced, machinery and technology. That sort of thing takes a long, long time.