Gold Pops Up In Another Counterintuitive Place

The New Scientist, science magazine and recurrent flack for AGW, has webbed a brief article relating to gold exploration: "Survey finds $20 billion of hidden Aussie gold." The survey referred to is a GeoScience Victoria survey of the geology of that Australian province.

Most of the gold already mined in the region is from central Victoria, where gold-bearing quartz rocks are exposed on the surface, says Lisitsin. "In the northern part of the state the same potentially gold-bearing rocks are hidden under the sediments, and gold deposits are still there waiting to be discovered," he says.

Lisitsin and his colleagues have used geological data from three zones in the gold province to work out how much of the metal might still be in the ground. He says it is 90 per cent certain that at least 500 tonnes is waiting to be discovered in the region. At today's prices, that would be worth $20 billion.

Much of this gold – some 290 tonnes – should be in a 10,000-square-kilometre region in the north of the gold province called the Bendigo zone. However, the team doesn't know precisely where....

Of course, an article of this sort is a far cry from the New Scientist turning into a recurrent flack for gold. Given time, though...