Group of Microbes Change Dissolved Gold to Solid

option8 writes " National Geographic, has a an article about a newly discovered strain of bacteria that might be used (though, as the article says, not cost-effectively) to harvest gold and other metals from seawater - a longtime fantasy of science fiction."

Comments

Impossible

[IP, Daily]

It can't be true!

Re:Impossible

[Ralph JewHater Nader]

Harvesting gold, eh? I bet the Goldsteins and the Goldbergs and all the other filthy kikes have known this for years, but they were too greedy to let anyone know. Every penny counts!

books.org URL does not exist!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://books.org/scifi/acclarke.html

File Not Found
The requested URL /scifi/acclarke.html was not found on this server.

Job satisfaction

[smunt]

I can't imagine people can live satisfied doing this kind of work. Dammit learn to program.

Re:Job satisfaction

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably won't be fucked though.

Re:Job satisfaction

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine people can live satisfied doing this kind of work. Dammit learn to program

Who says that the biologists don't already know how to program? Quite a few biologists consider programming (or at least scripting) an essential skill these days -- analyzing thousands of pieces of data by hand is no fun. And as for job satisfaction, contributing to the knowledge of humanity is way more satisfying than working for some soon to be defunct Web portal...

not first

[Anonymous Coward]

this is not the first post.

Hrm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could use it to turn my poop into gold, as well?

Re:Hrm...

[Anonymous Coward]

your poop is already golf fux0r!

Alchemists Unite.

[At000miC]

At last our time has come!

Excellent!

[Jon Howard]

I've been waiting for a way to lose my fillings while I eat my dinner.

Check those links before you submit!

[Robber Baron]

Either the link is incorrect or the site has been slashdotted already by geeks who are looking for another way to make money for doing nothing after the demise of all the "get paid to surf" schemes.

cost efficient

[wrinkledshirt]

"You couldn't use this process to harvest the gold from the ocean. The cost in pumping the water would be more than how much gold you could recover," he said. The gold particles excreted by the microbes are so tiny it would take about a million microbes to produce a gram of solid gold.

Heh, I'll give you a miracle of science too. Give me two bucks and presto! I'll give you back one.

Re:cost efficient

[aibrahim]

So...it is useful to reduce the costs of operating water purification facilities. Cities have to run those anyway, so if you install these and capture/harvest the gold that is in the water you are already pumping, you effectively reduce the costs.

See, they are useful anyway.

Re:cost efficient

[mrbester]

Plus a million microbes wouldn't take up much room, or much time to create (little bleeders breed like rabbits), so a simple mash tun with billions of the critters inside could be cost effective quite quickly. Maybe Budweiser can lend me one as they seem to have enough already.

Illuminati.

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Well, it's always good to see that Illuminati New World Order was right.

Here's a brilliant idea..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Its called "boiling". I once heard it described on TV..Apparently, you take a liquid, and you make it so hot that liquids turn right into gas!! Since water boils at 212'F and sodium dissolves at around 800'F, all you'de have to do is take a bucket of seawater, put a heat source beneath it, and wait!

This article gets my Most Dumb-Ass Article Of 2001 nomination. Its so dumb-ass you'de think Hemos was the one who posted it. Oh wait... he did post it. Hrm.

Cheers,

Wow, this is fantastic...

[throx]

...for those microbes!!! They are going to be RICH!

Re:Wow, this is fantastic...

[optikSmoke]

But will they get to keep their gold?

Or will they be exploited by some faceless corporation? Are they even paid for their mindless labour?

I smell a class-action lawsuit.....

Maybe not seawater

[rgmoore]

The microbes might not be economically viable at extracting gold from seawater, but that doesn't mean that they're useless. A clever engineer could probably figure out a way of using the microbes to cheaply process low grade ore. That's currently done using environmentally dangerous processes like cyanide heap leaching (which is as dangerous as you'd expect a process using large amount of cyanide to be) but a microbe that has an affinity for gold could make that type of work much safer and more environmentally friendly. Yes it would take quite a bit of work, but gold is still valuable enough that people are likely to look into it.

Re:Maybe not seawater

[Dylbert]

Cyanide Heap Leeching is not necessarily dangerous to the environment until it is released to a tailings storage facility (A big pond containing the refuse cyanide solution from the process). The beauty of (hopefully) running gold ore through a microbe solution instead of a cyanide solution is that if it were pumped a similar TSF-style pond, the ore would continue to break down (not just gold, but iron and other metals too) whilst it is in the pond.

Enormous potential.

A million microbes?

[jedwards]

A million microbes is nothing!
Just let them breed for a few hours and you'll have billions

And the whales suddenly die off

[Anonymous Coward]

Straining the ocean for minerals sounds a little bit premature. An environmental impact study would be necessary to see if any animals in the ocean would be adversely affected by removing particular minerals from the water.

Re:And the whales suddenly die off

[Ralph JewHater Nader]

Enough with this environmental drivel, it is typical zionist bullshit. It takes tons of seawater just to extract a single gram of gold (this hasn't stopped the jews though). No animal would die when deprived of trace minerals.

Here's another idea, toss all the jews into the ocean and drown them. Let them rest in peace among the treasures of the ocean.

Why not use tides ?

[Salsaman]

It says in the article that the 'cost of pumping the seawater' would be more than the value of the gold recovered.

Why not use tidal forces to pump the water ? Or even just wave power.

Re:Why not use tides ?

[jedwards]

Perhaps they were considering pumping the water up from the hydrothermal vents where the concentration is higher? Or perhaps they just forgot about tides...

Re:Why not use tides ?

[core10k]

Because it was written by a fucking journo. They always make shit up. Either that, or they're lying about something or other.

Re:Why not use tides ?

[dragons_flight]

A lot of bacteria that are found in exotic environments, such as hydrothermal vents, aren't horribly happy when moved far away from those environments. (After all if they were competitive in other places, you'd expect them to show up more widely in the ocean).

The article doesn't say, but they may require high temperature, high pressure, or unusual mineral solutions in order to grow and do their thing. This naturally leads to higher costs, at the very least causing you to pump water through some tank designed to keep them happy. Some of the bacteria used in environmental cleanup etc, are actually genetically modified versions meant to survive in environments other than where the trait developed. Of course on the other hand we might get lucky and they do like sitting on the beach churning out gold.

If it can be made profitable I'm sure someone will do it.

Re:Why not use tides ?

[jonnydigital]

"Why not use tidal forces to pump the water ? Or even just wave power."

You couldn't just let the bacteria escape into the ocean. It's not simply a matter of lowering a cage of bacteria into the ocean - you'd need to put the seawater in with the bacteria, leave it to work for a few days at least, then filter out the millions of tiny bacteria and put them in a box. (It's much similar to the technique used to produce insulin with genetically modified bacteria, only with gold instead of insulin.)

After all that, you're left with a tank maybe the size of a swimming pool full of sea water - and there's maybe only a milligram (or LESS) of gold in the whole thing.

Suffice to say, it's rarely worth it unless you're sure there's a whole bunch of Au dissolved in your patch of the Atlantic.

Re:Why not use tides ?

[Anonymous Coward]

• If it can be made profitable I'm sure someone will do it.

Score: +5 (Insightful)

OT: Anybody know what's up with kuro5hin.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been down for a couple of days now. Hacked again?

Re:OT: Anybody know what's up with kuro5hin.org?

[core10k]

Rusty finally figured out what pussy feels like and decided that his calling in life was as a male gigilo?(shrug) I'm curious too. Oh, and btw, why the hell can't people post anonymously any more?

gold in sea water

[guest12]

gold as a mineral isnt rare. for instance in sea water. only problem it is distributed widely in solution in minute quantities per gram. I read some years ago about mine dumps leaching metals, the problem was tackled by using some specialised bacteria. so using bacteria to concentrate metals is not new. seabed nodules are made by bacteria which gollect Nickel. but this takes thousands of years. by pumping sea water over beds of bacteria in factories the concentration of gold could be increased.

Who gives a shit about the whales

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke 'em, for all I care.

Genetic Use?

[Zergwyn]

As the article mentioned, microbes are already used to clean up toxic water by eating dangerous heavy metals, and research has been done into the processes and genes responsible. Perhaps the genes could be switched into something land based, like a fast growing moss or other plant. Imagine if a company could make more money by covering old leaky strip mines with plants, then just harvesting them!

Something fishy

[ortholattice]

From the article: Lovley isn't encouraging....The gold particles excreted by the microbes are so tiny it would take about a million microbes to produce a gram of solid gold.

There must be something wrong here. A glass of water could probably hold billions of microbes. So it could produce thousands of grams of solid gold? Seems like a good deal to me.

Re:Something fishy

[talonyx]

You aren't very smart, are you?

The microbes aren't made out of gold, they find the gold and lump it together.

So, yes, you could fit the microbes in a glass of water. The gold? There's not even a millimicrogram of gold in your drinking water.

It would take billions of liters to produce a sizable amount of gold.

Re:Something fishy

[thogard]

The problem is with a billion liters of seawater you will have quite a bit of salt if any of the water evaoprates. Gold in the ocean is about 5 to 50 parts per trillion. You would need a shallow lake about 1km on a side to hold enough ocean water to get an ounce of gold.

Oh no.

[perdida]

Not this again.

The dissolved metals in seawater are supposed to be there. They are ions, positive or negative ions that play an electrochemical and a biochemical role in that ecosystem.

Gold is a very useful industrial metal, but it makes more money for the gold-miners when the gold is used as jewelry instead. Why not address the cultural roots of the gold-scarcity issue; making it less valuable in the market place by abating the jewelers' love for it would free up much existing gold for industrial use.

Most countries currencies are off the gold standard anyway.

Re:Oh no.

[bonzoesc]

You greatly underestimate the desire of people for objects that are shiny. Go to a record store and look at the cover of a rap album.

Re:Oh no.

[HongPong]

If I'm not mistaken it's actually quite difficult to get relatively inert gold atoms into an ionized state. That's why it retains its luster when a treasure is lost in seawater for centuries, and one of the reasons it's useful in industry. Frankly I've never heard of any biological process involving Au or its ions, but INABc (I am not a Bio-chemist). There isn't an FDA recommended allowance of gold, is there?

Re:Oh no.

[Animats]

Why not address the cultural roots of the gold-scarcity issue...

That's happening. And the World Gold Council is trying to slow it down. The price of gold is way down from the peak. Gold is down about 75% in constant dollars from the peak in the 1970s. There are closed gold mines all over the world, ready to reopen if the price goes up. And central banks have been selling off gold ("why are we storing this stuff?").

The World Gold Council is trying to prop up the price with a campaign along the lines of the "Diamonds are Forever" campaign that the DeBeers Central Selling Organization ran for decades. It's not working.

uses

[Telastyn]

The actual use of this was afaik to precipitate dissolved Uranium and other dangerous elements out of streams and the such, so that people could then come by and remove the little nuggets.

Re:uses

[Izmunuti]

"precipitate dissolved Uranium and other dangerous elements"

Oh yes. Uranium is soooo dangerous. It's about 600 times more common in the Earth's crust than Gold is (~2 ppm vs ~3 ppb). Good luck precipitating all of it out.

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Reminds me...

[Plasmoid]

... of something I saw on the Discovery Channel. Apparently after invading Spain the Romans wanted to extract the gold inside of a mountian. So what they did was order their slaves to dig a winding maze of tunnels through the mountain. Then the romans unleashed a river to run through the mountain. This effectively destroyed the mountain and stripped out all the gold. The water then flowed into a plain which held Marygolds I think, it some yellow flower anyways.

[Anonymous Coward]

Redox!

[Negadecimal]

Everyone seems to think these bacteria are simply coagulating dissolved gold metal, something you could do by simply by letting water settle.

They're not.

The bacteria are reducing the gold from an ionized salt form (Ag+) to solid gold. That would take a bit more effort (and a ton of water pollution) for a laboratory to accomplish.

Re:Redox!

[Negadecimal]

On that note, you can use mercury to extract solid gold particles from water... just run the water over a bed of liquid mercury, separate the layers, and boil the mercury off. Of course, the mercury fumes will knock out your sanity...but that's another matter ;)

Re:Redox!

[Anonymous Coward]

The bacteria are reducing the gold from an ionized salt form (Ag+) to solid gold

That really is some trick, since you say they're turning silver (Ag) into gold (Au). But can you turn gold into cottage cheese?

Who ever thought that poop could be so exciting.

[Anonymous Coward]

For so long I thought farts were the end all best part, but these little microbes have shown me that gas is only the begining to a treasure.

A

[Anonymous Coward]

assdfasdfa

great

[Dirk Stiletto]

this is great! but why stop there, we can also harvest from say, people, and trees, and the ground! Excellent...

First observations compared to a reasoned response

[Lostman]

When I first saw this I thought, "Hey.. now THIS is something cool!" Being able to take seawater that has diluted gold and make it into solid gold.

When I thought a bit further, though, I found this to be actually a VERY bad thing. The wealth/borrowing power of a nation is measured by its wealth (where gold is one of the primary methods of determining wealth). If this is an easy way to obtain new gold (where cost to get the gold is >= the gold gained), this could literally cripple the economies of the countries of the world. Heck, someone with a lot of money to blow and a "beef with the world" could drop some money into this in the hopes that this could happen.

No Blinking Banners!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of the blinking banner ads.

Thank you.

cost-ineffective?

[Sarin]

"You couldn't use this process to harvest the gold from the ocean. The cost in pumping the water would be more than how much gold you could recover,"

You could use windenergy in order to pump the water or make use of the meganism of the tides.

Re:cost-ineffective?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once setting up the wind energy collector, you could simply sell that energy and forget about the gold.

Re:cost-ineffective?

[SnarfQuest]

Or, you could sell the energy generated by your wind/tide machine and make even more money. You would have to process a very large amount of water to get even a small quantity of gold. The value of the power you could generate would probably be greater than the small amount of gold you would find.

�

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Bowie J Poag: Fag0t, Loser, Asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Nitpicky

[Jobby]

Incidentally, Arthur C. Clarke wrote about using genetically engineered coral to extract gold from seawater in his 1975 book "Imperial Earth". However, the coral were extremely fragile, and eventually were only maintained as a curiosity.

Jobby

Re:Nitpicky

[Zenjive]

Off the subject, but I must say that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has to be the coolest smartest mofo on earth!

Here's to you Arthur!

Re:Nitpicky

[Nanookanano]

Coral structures made out of gold might be very beautiful.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine Reclamation

[alpinekarst]

If somone could figure out how to selectively extract precious metals out of this mess we wouldn't need another hard rock mine in the US for a LONG time, plus our watershed may still have some hope; its probably too late though. The sad part is that, our leaders are more interested in sucking corporate dick while the taxpayers cover defaulted reclamation bonds. This place could be a really great place if there were only some accountibility.

What do you call . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

a million gold chain-wearing niggers at the bottom of the ocean?

A good start.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Female Thought Patterns

[Anonymous Coward]

Please drop this evironmentalist bullshit.

The trace amounts of gold in the ocean play absolutely no useful purpose.

Now, a word of advice for you. Females (you are a female, right?) aren't generally capable of rational thought. They are ruled by their emotions. They are much happier when they drop all pretense of independent thought and focus on pleasing men.

Why don't you try this for a week. Stop going to coffee shops and reading indymedia. If any silly ideas involving public policy pop into your head, drown them out immediately. Focus all your energy on making you boyfriend happy (you do have a boyfriend? If not, you may be worse off than I expected). At the end of this little experiment, tell me you don't feel more natural and fulfilled. Of course, if you're extremely ugly, or a lesbian (and those two usually go hand in hand), you have no place in society and can resign yourself to a lifetime of empty striving and intellectual posturing.

Re:First observations compared to a reasoned respo

[metachimp]

For countries that rely on gold to back up their currencies, this would be a bad thing. Fortunately, in the US, we don't have that problem. There's probably a few others as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:First observations compared to a reasoned respo

[Atreides4]

Actually, gold has not been an important factor in the global economy for about thirty years now. The amount of gold in the world is a drop in the bucket by comparison to the amount of money in circulation, as evidenced by the fact that even in the 1930s the gold supply simply could not keep up with the need of governments to expand the money supply. Since the values of currency are no longer tied to gold, gold is a commodity, like iron or copper. If a lot of gold is injected into the world economy, hte price of gold will plummet (gold prices have also been sinking for years anyway), and that will be about the end of the global effect. As drops in commodity price are usually good for hte economy, I would suggest the psycho with a beef against the world look elsewhere. If this rich psycho really wanted to screw with the global economy, he could find a way to print billions in bogus US dollars. It would wreak havoc on hte US economy, not to mention the economies of the other nations whose currencies are tied to the dollar.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:First observations compared to a reasoned respo

[metachimp]

I should also point out that it is because of the situation mentioned above that the US does not use the gold standard. We learned right after the Gold Rush in California that relying on gold for the value of currency is not good.

I believe it was William Jennings Bryant who stated something like "You shall not hang the nation on a cross of gold", or something like that...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the biter,

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me. :)

-perdida

Oh, yeah. we are having quite a fun scientific argument over at adequacy.org

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I knew I was responding to a troll. Yes, I was serious about that experiment I think you ought to perform.
Give it a try, eh?

Is this really how you intended your life to go? Trolling weblogs on Friday nights? Wouldn't you rather be bent over the proverbial table being fucked right now?

SLASHDOT HAS A BUG

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Re:First observations compared to a reasoned respo

[TWR]

I believe it was William Jennings Bryant who stated something like "You shall not hang the nation on a cross of gold", or something like that...

If I remember my early 20th century history correctly (and I might not), Bryant wanted free and unlimited minting of money. This would have made it easier for farmers (his chief supporters) to pay off their debts (small farmers then had the same problems as small farmers now), but would have made inflation rampant.

Bryant would have wanted these microbes because his understanding of economics sucked. His understanding of evolution sucked, too (he was part of the prosecution in the Scopes Monkey Trial). Hell of a public speaker, though

-jon

The difference between women and men

[Anonymous Coward]

is that I rather care who would be doing the table-bending-over, etc.

You could see in my k5 diary, if it were up, that I have a cute new hair-do and it makes jerks of both genders hit on me on the way to work.

Thus far, nobody who is not a) obviously insane b) drunk or c) hideous ever hits on me for some reason.

So, I could be doing something tonight but I would rather promote the magnificent website of which I am a part than deliberately spend money doing stuff with someone boring and dumb.

Besides, what are YOU doing trolling weblogs on a friday night?

-perdida

Re:The difference between women and men

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus far, nobody who is not a) obviously insane b) drunk or c) hideous ever hits on me for some reason.

I suspect your icy demeanor and ridiculous politics are off-putting to most of the normal men you encounter. Try being feminine, not feminist, and see if your luck doesn't change.

Besides, what are YOU doing trolling weblogs on a friday night?

Because I happen to have a few hours of spare time and it happens to be Friday night. I'm not bound by social convention as to when I enjoy myself in the real world.

Group of microbes?

[Zenjive]

Will they be going IPO soon? Can I get a loan?

Re:Group of microbes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great sig!!! The best movie of all time!

...you think that's cool

[JimBobJoe]

It isn't as cool as when Dr. Honeydew and Beaker on The Muppets changed solid gold into cottage cheese. That ladies and gentleman, is progress!

Paranoid Thought

[m_evanchik]

What if gold is essential for some unknown process in the seas? Maybe mining the gold will have some unpleasant side effects. I often wonder this same thing when I think about mining asteroids for precious metals. What if some proto-virus is brought back, a la "The Andromeda Strain".

Admittedly, this is far-fetched, but I imagine that even an inert substance like gold must affect the ecosystem, But then again, Maybe the amount that would be extracted is still tiny compared to the sea-water reserves. How much gold is in that water?

Re:Paranoid Thought

[HE'sSpartacus]

Well, we know gold is necessary for at least one process in the ocean. These bacteria "breathe" it don't they...? (gold metal is inert, but Au3+ in solution probably isn't)

Re:Paranoid Thought

[m_evanchik]

This kind of reminds me when I heard of the petroleum-eating bacteria that would be used to clean up oil spills. I always wondered if they might feast to much on the oil and end up in the actual reserves.

Ever seen gypsy-moths feast on a forest?

i pooped on your fingers

[Anonymous Coward]

and you are licking them dude

Re:i pooped on your fingers

[Anonymous Coward]

get on topic, you damn troll.

Re:i pooped on your fingers

[Anonymous Coward]

if i was on topic then i wouldn't be a troll you fucking goatsex goat fucker

Bugs from remote places

[Nanookanano]

Microorganisms brought out from the jungles have and are causing health problems in people. I wonder about things that eat metals around hydrothermic vents. A bug that consumes a trace metal would probably do much damage if it could survive in blood. The multiplication of disease vectors worries me.

You can get the dumbass post of the month award...

[AA0]

why? because you obviously know absolutely nothing about physics or chemistry. You can't boil water and get gold, if you actually read the article, you'd know that the gold in water, isn't the gold that is used in jewelery and stuff. Gold is almost completely non-reactive, its why we use it.

Of course, spending the money to boil a liter of water to get less than 1 ppm of gold is a great money maker.

When the electrons are passed to or from the gold in the water, the gold is oxidized or reduced (depending on the state its in), and the gold is changed to its solid form. Although the article is wrong, its not like oxygen we breathe, because we don't reduce or oxidize oxygen.

Also in the news...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

In a related story, microbiologist Stanley Wellington has discovered a new breed of microbes present only in the craniums of US policitians. These microbes are believed to have co-devolved with public officeholders by metabolising ethereal common sense, and excreting it in a manner that protects a human brain from coming in contact with it. In a groundbreaking experiment, Dr. Wellington cultured the microbes, a feat in and of itself. "These bugs were particularly tricky, as many of my assistants and graduate students have above average IQ's", Dr. Wellington said. "Naturally, the microbes would thrive at a moderate proximity to the experimenters, but when we ventured too close, they would die suddenly. It turns out, that you can 'overfeed' them with intelligence, something that is unlikely to ever occur in their natural habitat. Working closely with leading animal trainers, we were able to train chimps to perform the various mundane functions necessary to culturing the microbes. The more complicated tasks had to be performed remotely, with very expensive robotic equipment..." After successfully culturing these primordial bacteris, he and his associates designed an elaborate experiment to more closely guage their activity. As it turns out, the very same chimp that assisted, could supply as much raw intelligence as 20 million politicians could over a 1000 year time span. Dr. Wellington states "We found this incredible. If you add up all local, state, and federal politicians, from the mayor of the smallest town, all the way up to Dubya, there are less than 8 million public office holders. Marty [the chimp] is clearly intelligent enough to perform all their duties simultaneously, and still provide better economic, defense, and social results." Dr. Emanuel Smith, of the St. Fredericks Bioscience Institute comments "Clearly this is the biological discovery of the millenia! I wouldn't be suprised if it were proven that these bacteria were infecting the voting population of the United states, as we've known for years that only retards believe their votes count in any significant way. For instance, this may be where the microbe prepares new hosts...". Asked if he believed a vaccine could be developed, Dr. Smith stated that hand grenades are far cheaper, off the shelf technology, and that you get to see the liars "splatter like rotten fruit".

The next phase of their research shall attempt to determine whether any other occupations are at risk from these brain-sucking microbes, such as grade school teachers, and NASA engineers.

Heard it on NPR

[Wyatt Earp]

Heard about this on the way to work.

Seems that they are looking at these critters for extraction of Radioactive material in water for nuclear cleanups at Hanford and Rocky Flats. I recall they can pretty much work with any metal, and they think that these guys are the reason there were/are gold/silver flakes in river and stream beds.

If I rember it right, and since I can't get on the link...thats all I have...you get these things going in a pond with radioactive sediments after a while they'll accumulate big enough flakes that you can strain it out.

There is talk about using them on the piles (cubic miles) of debris from gold and silver mines like Homestake and the mines in Colorado and California, as well as cleaning up copper mines in Montana, Wyoming and Utah.

How nobel...

[6EQUJ5]

... to think of harvesting metals for profit, instead researching the potential to de-toxify the environment, or even an organism that suffers from metal poisoning.

Granted, gold is extremely harmless to humans when ingested (relative to lead and mercury), but still...

Alfred Bester

[rakerman]

In Bester's The Computer Connection (called Extro in the UK) a guy is extracting gold from seawater and trying to give it to artists in the past who died of impoverishment.

Re:You can get the dumbass post of the month award

[Anonymous Coward]

Oxygen is in fact reduced when it is used in metabolism, which is why we breath it. Oxygen in aerobic organisms is used as the final electron acceptor in the electron transport chain in the mitochondria of cells. This is why the comparison stands--chemotrophic organisms like this use metals to act as the final electron acceptor.

How to make a goldfish.

[Futurepower(tm)]

'You couldn't use this process to harvest the gold from the ocean. The cost in pumping the water would be more than how much gold you could recover," he said. The gold particles excreted by the microbes are so tiny it would take about a million microbes to produce a gram of solid gold.'

Duh! It takes about 10 minutes for microbes to divide to make a million.

You design a slightly larger organism to eat these microbes.

Then, you design a fish that eats the slightly larger organism.

Then you have a goldfish! It's easy.

Re: How to make a goldfish.

[Futurepower(tm)]

Oh yeah, and I forgot to say that you release the young fish from the inside of an empty bank vault at the top of a stream.

The fish are genetically engineered to be like salmon, so they come back to where they were born. When they come back, heavy with gold, you just close the vault doors.

Re:First observations compared to a reasoned respo

[thogard]

For 5,000 years, an once of gold was about the weekly wage for a high level person. This ended in about 1970.

Re:You can get the dumbass post of the month award

[SuperLiquidSex]

how in the hell do you oxidize oxygen?

why it's not working

[Anonymous Coward]

www.gata.org

Re:You can get the dumbass post of the month award

[Anonymous Coward]

to oxydize means to react in some way with surroundings. When people hear the word oxydation all they think of is cars rusting. Rust is a type of oxydation (the metal reacts with it's surroundings)

Metals from seawater NOT science fiction

[Mike Greaves]

Metals have been produced from seawater for decades, and very economically, too. There are several which can be practically produced this way. But of that group, the only common *structural* metal which I can think of is Magnesium.

Magnesium hydroxide can be cheaply extracted from brine by precipitation when a cheap alkali is added - usually slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). The magnesium hydroxide becomes the feedstock for electrolytic cells which produce metallic magnesium. This second step is similar to the way that metallic aluminum is produced from aluminum hydroxide, after it is refined from bauxite. At one time, most of the world's magnesium was produced this way, though it may or may not be now - there are other practical sources. It is sufficient to say that the cost of electrolysis for magnesium production greatly outweighs the cost of the hydroxide feedstock, regardless of the source.

Uranium can also be produced from seawater, by various methods, but the cost is very much higher than either current world prices (very low right now) or even historical peak prices. It *is* however, *definitely* not too expensive for breeder reactor usage (breeders yield ~100 times more energy per unit mass of natural uranium). And there is something like 500 - 1000 times more uranium dissolved in seawater than all current, proven reserves in conventional mines.

In addition, I believe several other, non-structural metals are or can be produced from seawater. Rubidium, cesium, strontium, barium are perhaps possible. The amounts available is *usually* vastly larger than mine reserves.

Clearly, calling metal extraction from seawater "science fiction" is quite inappropriate.

Re:You can get the dumbass post of the month award

[AA0]

hm, maybe in the metabolism, but not in the coversion from CO2 from O2. Either that or I just can't think today.

This is a great opportunity!

[TheLinuxWizard]

Maybe we can use this technology to help some of the Linux startups that are in trouble! The only thing we need for world domination is a neverending supply of gold! Great work guys!

Gold from seawater - an old dream

[Osram]

After the first world war Germany had to pay huge reparation costs. So, Fritz Haber tried to extract the gold from the sea water. Sounds ludicrous? Maybe, but IMHO it sounds even more ludicrous to create fertilizer from gases contained in the air - until you hear that Haber and Bosch did just that.

Quick! Patent the Microbes!

[Penguinoflight]

Who cares if you can't make any fair amount of Gold usig them, patent them, and make everyone else pay you! Just tell them the microbes were harvested in your IT department.

I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the platnum card advertised on that page come from microbes?

Kewl!

[NeuroManson]

Now I can just pop a pill and all that wasted gold from Goldschlager can be ejected as a nifty keen solid gold nugget!

Re:Kewl!

[NetGuru(42)]

mmm, goldschlager.

I wonder, if I drank enough of this would I shit gold bricks?