
Prospecting for gold by looking in leaves has proven itself in Australia - pseudolus
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/05/25/if-youre-looking-for-gold-look-in-trees
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zizee
A good friend of mine is a geologist working in lithium exploration, and has
found measuring samples from termite mounds to be a good indicator of what
will be found by doing a much more expensive drill.

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mogadsheu
Prospecting for natural resources is a global lottery: The largest oil field
in Mexico was found by a fisherman who noticed noticed slicks on his boat back
in the 70s.

It took world class geologists to characterize/pull it out, though. And I
think Pemex gave him a cushy lifetime job too!

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jonahss
I'm disappointed they collected the leaves by hand. I thought the article was
going to say they can measure the gold-content in leaves using drone imagery

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Cognitron
Yeah, same. I thought they would be using satellite imagery. Archaeologists
have found Mayan ruins that way because the ruins have a ton of lime plaster
and the trees growing above them absorb it the same way. The leaves of the
trees above the ruins reflect specific frequencies differently than the other
surrounding trees and you can see blotches where the ruins are in the images
(when shifted into the visible spectrum). I always wondered if you could find
other things that way.

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cyphar
From memory, this is how Gina Rhineheart's (Australia's mining magnate) father
discovered the location for the Pilbara (the world's largest iron deposit) --
by flying overhead and noticing how red the soil was[1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Hancock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Hancock)

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ericol
"Marmota" is spanish for groundhog and is also used as a non-insulting synonym
word for dumb.

There's nothing dumb about this approach, thought.

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tareqak
There is animal called a "marmot" in English that are large squirrels [0].
Groundhogs are part of that family, "Groundhog, woodchuck, or whistlepig, M.
monax found in most of North America" [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot#Subgenera_and_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot#Subgenera_and_species)

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RenRav
Fascinating approach, I wonder if many other things could be tested for in
this way.

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deepnotderp
I wonder if this can be useful for say, lithium prospecting?

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tehlike
Zizee in this post claims yes.

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voldacar
For everyone who gets hit with the paywall:

[https://outline.com/Juz295](https://outline.com/Juz295)

Interesting article

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ibeckermayer
Thank you, but I’m also curious how that’s legal

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dymk
It's not, it's an obvious violation of copyright. Outline.com's primary use
case is pirating paid-for content.

They have a whitelist of domains they support, and they intentionally
implement support for paywalled sites.

They're just not big enough yet to where large publishers have started to go
after them.

~~~
ibeckermayer
I see, thanks for clarifying.

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karol
Why do we need to mine for gold in 2019?

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HarryHirsch
Because the metal is used in gold-plated contacts, it's as easy as that. That
is a problem, because unlike jewellery gold, gold in electronic equipment is
not recycled.

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dmurray
Gold in electronic equipment is not generally recycled because it's cheaper to
mine it. Gold might seem expensive, but you can put a ceiling on its price by
thinking about what it would cost to reprocess phones in bulk. Currently tens
of dollars per phone, for dollars worth of gold. Increase the price of gold,
or recover some other valuable materials, and it becomes economically viable.

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jdietrich
Gold is absolutely worth recovering from consumer electronics, as is copper
and a bunch of other stuff. It's not necessarily worth _collecting_ , but
there are plenty of huge piles of e-waste lying around the globe.

[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b04909](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b04909)

~~~
analog31
One problem with gold recycling is that some simple methods are also
phenomenally harmful to both workers and the environment, as they involve
dissolving the gold with mercury. From what I've read, some of this stuff gets
shipped to countries with relatively weak labor and environmental laws.

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kragen
The mercury used in that process is generally recycled in a closed loop; if
it's done properly, dangerous levels don't get into the workers or the
environment. Metallic mercury is the least dangerous form of mercury, less
toxic even than the ores mercury is mined from.

~~~
robkop
Unfortunately with high gold prices it becomes profitable to run small
operations that don't meet the same standards. Currently it is believed that
1/3 of all mercury pollution comes from illegal gold mining [0].

[0]:[https://www.amazonconservation.org/pdf/gold_mining_fact_shee...](https://www.amazonconservation.org/pdf/gold_mining_fact_sheet.pdf)

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anonymousDan
Who said money doesn't grow on trees?

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marvel_boy
paywall

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voldacar
Readable with outline:

[https://outline.com/Juz295](https://outline.com/Juz295)

