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Growing Your Own Gold
An anonymous reader submits: "Scientists believe it may be possible to grow gold like growing potatoes. Time to throw away my IT degree and go back to being a primary producer!"
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Oh well, good thing I didn't quit my day job then...
...grow gold like growing potatoes...
If this works out, McDonald's will have a new prize giveaway. No more Monopoly: now it is "Golden Fries"
(Hot coffee trolls refrain from replying to item)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The highly prized chunks of gold may be the product of generations of soil microbes at work.
I bet by the time you factor in health insurance, wages, and a 401K plan growing gold is no longer a functioning business plan.
SMH.com.au has a more informed description of what happens. The gold is not "grown," it is "collected." Bacteria break down and carry gold material away from a larger vein, and another group picks it up and deposits it when they get to a chunk or nugget. ABC au also has a good article.
So unless you happen to live near a large, undiscovered underground tract of gold, your chance of growing gold in your backyard like potatoes is just about zero.
The ______ Agenda
No, they don't really grow gold, they just sort of extract it and move it around. Unlike growing a potato.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Takers anyone? Periodic table symbo AU is the symbol for what? Gold.
Coincidence, but funny nonetheless.
Now, if they could breed flowering potato plants that turn red in the presence of gold mines, we might have something here!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm curious if they did the research to see if this bacteria/fungus works with other heavy metals as well, i.e. Silver, Mercury. If so, it might be possible to adapt this type of process to the removal of heavy metals from soil and drinking water sources.
Does anyone else find it funny that the link was to a .au site?
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
someone will explain to you the difference between the chemical and biological processes required to form a potato, and the difference between that and the sort of chemical processes that would be required to *create* gold.
I guess that was my original point, that this isn't spontaneous generation, or any number of other things... just accretion.
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Actually, that is how you spell "Potatoes". It's the plural of "potato". People made fun of Quayle because he spelt "potato" "potatoe", which is wrong. As wrong as "potatos" (which is also wrong). Like, the plural of "hero" is "heroes", and "heroe" and "heros" are both wrong
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
doesn't seawater contain some sort of trace elements of gold which can be converted using exorbitant chemical process?
could a vat of these microbes be fed sea-water and turn it all into gold rapidly?
gold has many uses. if i could make a machine that could 'grow' tons of it, i sure as hell would.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yo, dumbass. The plural of potato IS potatoes. Quayle's mistake was spelling the singular form "potatoe." Learn English.
Like, the plural of "hero" is "heroes", and "heroe" and "heros" are both wrong
However, the plural of "gyro" (the sandwich, rhymes with "hero") is "gyros" [1]. Oddly, though, the plural of "gyro" (short for "gyroscope") is also listed as "gyros", though I would think it should be "gyroes"
When I say them out loud, I can hear a long sound like "oes" in "heroes", where I hear a more clipped "os" in "gyros" -- though maybe that's just my trying to add a Greek accent. When I say "gyroes" out loud, emphasizing the "y" with a Texas drawl, it really sounds like an "oes". And my co-workers look over the cube walls to see what form of dementia I'm currently exhibiting.
Potatoes, gyros, heroes... All this posting is making me hungry. Time for lunch.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
One of the things about gold that makes it so valuable is it's relative scarcity. If anyone were to start growing gold (yes that's not quite what the article said but...) then the prices would come down due to abundance of supply and pretty soon gold is worthless. Same basic law of supply and demand that is affecting all the IT jobs heading to India, so I'd hope not....
...in bed
Really? Takes me about a few seconds and a good porno mag.
The Diamond cartels hoard most of the Diamonds so that only a very small percentage is available for public consumption. Scarcity is manufactured, and the prices are artificially inflated to the financial gain of the cartels.
during the United State's first gold rush, which took place in the North Georgia mountains in the early 1800's around the town of Dahlonega, the "mother lode" was never found. All that was ever found was gold dust and nuggets. But what nuggets!!!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
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"Scientists believe it may be possible to grow gold like growing potatoes."
All right, who let those "scientists" escape from the mental institute?
Written in 1556, by a German, in Latin -- it covered labor management, metal working, ore processing, mining and prospecting .
Agricola explained that gold grew in the ground, like the roots of trees. So, he said it first.
(The first book was entitled Pirotechnia, written in Italian, in the city of Siena, in 1540, by one Vannocio Biringucio.)
(I know Agricola doesn't sound like a German name. His real name was Georg Bauer. Like Nicholas Copernicus he translated his name into Latin. People did that back then.)
Actually the common use for "gyro" when referring to the greek pita sandwich OR just the meat, is gyros. Very seldom will you see a greek retaurant that has a "gyro" listed on their menu, but rather gyros. But as for it rhyming with hero, you're correct. yee-rows
I, for one, welcome our new gold gathering bacteria overlords