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Gold Mining Bacteria
Anonymous 49'er writes "Nature is reporting that bacteria found in Australian gold mines are capable of extruding tiny invisible 'secondary grains' from soil and alluvial systems. From the article: "Potential applications -- from sensing the bacteria as a way to look for gold mines, to using them to help make industrially useful particles of gold -- may be some way off. But Southam is keen to exploit the bacteria's natural trick. 'I want to make a gold nugget one day,' he says. 'Gold nuggets grow in nature, so why shouldn't I be able to make one?'"
There's no obvious mechanism by which gold should spontaneously form into nuggets in the wild; I don't really believe that gold particles in the soil magically find their way together by some mystical process of attraction.
Is it not more likely that these bacteria have been excreting gold as a matter of habit for hundreds of millions of years, and that gold nuggets are in fact the toilet pits of huge bacterial colonies from ages past? Perhaps the bacteria feed off sulphur or some other element that's mixed with the gold...
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There is a large gold mine near where I live that uses bacteria to extract gold from the ore that is dug out of the mine. I'm not sure of the specifics, I'd have to ask my brother (he works at the mine), but basically, you feed the bacteria, and in return, they purify the ore. Gotta be better than chemical means such as arsenic and mercury.
An old article from 2002... Bacteria Point The Way To Gold Deposits http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/02052 3075914.htm/
Can bacteria help find gold? A pilot survey of 11 soil profiles across gold mining regions in the Peoples Republic of China indicates that elevated spore counts of Bacillus cereus, a common soil bacterium, were detected in areas adjacent to underlying gold deposits.....