There's a Volcano in Antarctica Spewing Crystals of Gold Into The Atmosphere
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Add ScienceAlert on Google Mount Erebus in Antarctica.
(Doug Allan/ Photodisc/Getty Images) Lava. All are known and expected outputs from an active volcano. But one volcano deep in the farthest, frozen reaches of our planet marches to the beat of a slightly different drum.
On Ross Island in the Ross Sea, a deep bay in Antarctica, Mount Erebus fumes about 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) from the Geographic South Pole. The world's southernmost active volcano, it bubbles with a permanent lake of blazing lava. And in the gas constantly pouring forth from this gate to the underworld, scientists found microscopic particles of crystalline, elemental gold.
According to a 1991 research paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Erebus belches out about 80 grams (2.8 ounces) of microscopic gold dust per day, scattering it as far as 1,000 kilometers away – maybe even farther. To date, it's the only volcano in the world known to spew forth crystalline elemental gold particles. The real mystery, though, is how the gold escapes the magma in the first place.
Actually, gold in volcanic emissions isn't all that unusual.
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