Science & Technology - Posted by Janelle Kirkland-Queensland on
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 15:46 - 1 Comment Do earthquakes have
the Midas touch? U. QUEENSLAND (AUS) — Earthquakes may be one of
the primary ways that gold and quartz deposits form, a new study
suggests. New research published in Nature Geoscience
demonstrates the link between seismic activity and the
precipitation of gold and other trace elements in earthquake
fault zones. Researchers combined geochemistry and seismology to
develop the simple mathematical model to test a theory about the
speed at which precipitation of gold and quartz occurs, says
Dion Weatherley, senior research fellow at the University of
Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute. Straight from the
Source Weatherley worked with Richard Henley, a visiting fellow
at the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth
Sciences, who developed the hypothesis. “While geochemical and
geological evidence has long alluded to a connection between
earthquakes and the deposition