One of the reasons gold is so valuable is because it is highly unreactive—if you make something out of gold, it keeps its lustrous radiance. Even when you can react it with another material, it’s also ...

Geologists have known for decades that gold forms in quartz with the help of earthquakes, but now they have worked out exactly how the setting and seismic waves combine to form large nuggets. When you ...

Earthquakes may cause gold nuggets to form in quartz by generating an electric field that attracts gold dissolved in fluid forced up from deep underground. Enormous gold nuggets are often associated ...

We can't usually feel them, but dozens of earthquakes occur every day—and some of them are using mundane minerals to make glittering gold. Researchers have found that tectonic shifts put just the ...