I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

purple said:

I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

Where does all the gold in the sewerage system come from?

oh. I didn’t know about that. shall have a look (on google, not the sewer)

It scratches off the rings usually if very small amounts and falls to the ground etc. It is adsorbed onto humic particles, can be (slowly) dissolved in neutral chloride waters and sulphurous waters.

Lottermoser B gold sewer – as search terms – should give you the research.

purple said:

I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

returned to whence it came.

Skeptic Pete said:

purple said:

I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

returned to whence it came.

“Whence” means “from which place”.

OCDC said:

Skeptic Pete said:

purple said:

I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

returned to whence it came.

“Whence” means “from which place”.

yes…..

Skeptic Pete said:

OCDC said:

Skeptic Pete said:

returned to whence it came.

“Whence” means “from which place”.

yes…..

“Returned to from which place it came” does not make sense.

OCDC said:

Skeptic Pete said:

OCDC said:

“Whence” means “from which place”.

yes…..

“Returned to from which place it came” does not make sense.

Well it does to me.

purple said:

I was looking at my signet ring, which is almost 40 years old, and of course the engraving has almost disappeared.
that got me to thinking, where does the gold go?
all of the people wearing gold must be “shedding” it.
where is it all?

everywhere

whence can also mean from where or from which.

ChrispenEvan said:

whence can also mean from where or from which.

Exactly!

OCDC said:

Skeptic Pete said:

OCDC said:

“Whence” means “from which place”.

yes…..

“Returned to from which place it came” does not make sense.

Pete: leave the “to” out of the sentence. “Returned whence it came.” Then it makes sense.

Returned from whence it came

Oh for FUCKS SAKE!

Heh heh heh.

so there are millions of gold particles laying around?

purple said:

so there are millions of gold particles laying around?

Pretty much. Very tiny, mostly. Mixed with a lot of other stuff. Sometimes adsorbed onto other molecules. Sometimes dissolved and washed away. Sometimes smeared onto other surfaces. (Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

Michael V said:

purple said:

so there are millions of gold particles laying around?

Pretty much. Very tiny, mostly. Mixed with a lot of other stuff. Sometimes adsorbed onto other molecules. Sometimes dissolved and washed away. Sometimes smeared onto other surfaces. (Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

I would have thought that mercury would be more malleable and ductile.

where has all the gold gone?

long time passin

where has all the gold gone?

long time ago

bob(from black rock) said:

Michael V said:

purple said:

so there are millions of gold particles laying around?

Pretty much. Very tiny, mostly. Mixed with a lot of other stuff. Sometimes adsorbed onto other molecules. Sometimes dissolved and washed away. Sometimes smeared onto other surfaces. (Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

I would have thought that mercury would be more malleable and ductile.

Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all known metals. A single ounce of gold can be beaten into a sheet measuring roughly 5 meters on a side. Thin sheets …

Estimated Crustal Abundance: 4×10-3 milligrams per kilogram

Estimated Oceanic Abundance: 4×10-6 milligrams per litre

bob(from black rock) said:

Michael V said:

Pretty much. Very tiny, mostly. Mixed with a lot of other stuff. Sometimes adsorbed onto other molecules. Sometimes dissolved and washed away. Sometimes smeared onto other surfaces. (Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

I would have thought that mercury would be more malleable and ductile.

Mercury is neither malleable nor ductile at room temperature. Frozen, it’s less malleable and less ductile than gold. (It’s actually somewhat brittle.)

Now, where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

Wocky said:

Now, where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

:)

bob(from black rock) said:

Michael V said:

(Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

I would have thought that mercury would be more malleable and ductile.

Well played, Bob. However, malleability and ductility really only apply to solids. Note that liquid mercury on a sheet of glass (say) does not form a thin layer, it tends to form into little beads.

Frozen mercury is quite malleable and ductile, but I can’t find any figures for it. And I guess to be fair we’d have to compare the properties of frozen mercury to other metals at that temperature.

OTOH, mercury has a nasty habit of causing other metals to become brittle, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Although gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal known, it’s possible that the element below it in the periodic table, Roentgenium , element 111, is even more malleable and ductile. But it’s quite radioactive, with a half-life around 26 seconds, so we may never be able to make enough of it to test its physical properties directly.

Roentgenium is expected to have a density of around 28.7 g/cm³, much denser than gold (19.30 g/cm³) and even denser than the platinum group metal osmium (22.61 g/cm³), the densest non-radioactive metal. But they are all light-weights compared to hassium (element 108), with an outrageous (predicted) density of 40.7 g/cm³.

PM 2Ring said:

bob(from black rock) said:

Michael V said:

(Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

I would have thought that mercury would be more malleable and ductile.

Well played, Bob. However, malleability and ductility really only apply to solids. Note that liquid mercury on a sheet of glass (say) does not form a thin layer, it tends to form into little beads.

Frozen mercury is quite malleable and ductile, but I can’t find any figures for it. And I guess to be fair we’d have to compare the properties of frozen mercury to other metals at that temperature.

OTOH, mercury has a nasty habit of causing other metals to become brittle, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Although gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal known, it’s possible that the element below it in the periodic table, Roentgenium , element 111, is even more malleable and ductile. But it’s quite radioactive, with a half-life around 26 seconds, so we may never be able to make enough of it to test its physical properties directly.

Roentgenium is expected to have a density of around 28.7 g/cm³, much denser than gold (19.30 g/cm³) and even denser than the platinum group metal osmium (22.61 g/cm³), the densest non-radioactive metal. But they are all light-weights compared to hassium (element 108), with an outrageous (predicted) density of 40.7 g/cm³.

Nice work.. As we all should know. malleability and ductility require human interference.

Elsewhere.

Elsewhere is big.

PM 2Ring said:

Roentgenium , element 111, is even more malleable and ductile. But it’s quite radioactive, with a half-life around 26 seconds, so we may never be able to make enough of it to test its physical properties directly.

So as Pete Seeger would be wont to say, “If I had a hammer, I’d need to be bloody quick”.

sibeen said:

PM 2Ring said:

Roentgenium , element 111, is even more malleable and ductile. But it’s quite radioactive, with a half-life around 26 seconds, so we may never be able to make enough of it to test its physical properties directly.

So as Pete Seeger would be wont to say, “If I had a hammer, I’d need to be bloody quick”.

yeah. very bloody quick.

If Seeger met Seaborg, what a wonderful world it would be

Wiki says: Most of the Earth’s gold probably lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth.

dv said:

If Seeger met Seaborg, what a wonderful world it would be

LOL

Michael V said:

purple said:

so there are millions of gold particles laying around?

Pretty much. Very tiny, mostly. Mixed with a lot of other stuff. Sometimes adsorbed onto other molecules. Sometimes dissolved and washed away. Sometimes smeared onto other surfaces. (Gold is the most malleable and most ductile metal.)

Yeah. There is gold pretty much everywhere.

It tends to get slowly concentrated and accumulated by geological forces. Then humans mine it and refine out the gold and turn it into objects of jewellery. Jewellery slowly wears down back into very tiny scattered particles.

PM 2Ring said:

Wiki says: Most of the Earth’s gold probably lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth.

Probably that is not where the gold from Purple’s ring ended up…

When I was a kid, Glenn T. Seaborg was one of my heroes.

Glenn T. Seaborg

Wikipedia said:

Glenn Theodore Seaborg (April 19, 1912 – February 25, 1999) was an American scientist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in this area also led to his development of the actinide concept and the arrangement of the actinide series in the periodic table of the elements.

Seaborg spent most of his career as an educator and research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, serving as a professor, and, between 1958 and 1961, as the university’s second chancellor. He advised ten US Presidents – from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton – on nuclear policy and was Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971, where he pushed for commercial nuclear energy and the peaceful applications of nuclear science. Throughout his career, Seaborg worked for arms control.

[…]

dv said:

PM 2Ring said:

Wiki says: Most of the Earth’s gold probably lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth.

Probably that is not where the gold from Purple’s ring ended up…

Give it time… ;)

PM 2Ring said:

dv said:

PM 2Ring said:

Wiki says: Most of the Earth’s gold probably lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth.

Probably that is not where the gold from Purple’s ring ended up…

Give it time… ;)

Not if we first looked in the sewers.

PM 2Ring said:

dv said:

PM 2Ring said:

Wiki says: Most of the Earth’s gold probably lies at its core, the metal’s high density having made it sink there in the planet’s youth.

Probably that is not where the gold from Purple’s ring ended up…

Give it time… ;)

:)

Note that, even without any concentration, there’s gold in the soil, in the plants and animals. It gets around.

I’m golden, according to the wife.

• Note, the amount does vary quite a bit from day to day.

sibeen said:

I’m golden, according to the wife.

• Note, the amount does vary quite a bit from day to day.
  

and the value goes up and down upon every appraisal.

sibeen said:

I’m golden, according to the wife.

Does she often shower you with such praise?

dv said:

sibeen said:

I’m golden, according to the wife.

Does she often shower you with such praise?

On a regular basis.

cough

you are all so refined.

peace be upon you.

dv said:

sibeen said:

I’m golden, according to the wife.

Does she often shower you with such praise?

That’s Gold

heheh

CrazyNeutrino said:

dv said:

sibeen said:

I’m golden, according to the wife.

Does she often shower you with such praise?

That’s Gold

heheh

Do you know, I just got the pun in that.

Jaysus, dv, you’re a pervert!

:)

My all-time favourite “Global Village” program was about people who made their living panning the sewage system for gold.

Is there any way of changing half-lives?

OCDC said:

Is there any way of changing half-lives?

blink

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Is there any way of changing half-lives?

blink

Thank-you Jeannie, but you don’t look good in that outfit.

Is the half-life an inherent immutable property of an isotope?

OCDC said:

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Is there any way of changing half-lives?

blink

Thank-you Jeannie, but you don’t look good in that outfit.

Is the half-life an inherent immutable property of an isotope?

yes.

I believe its governed by the weak nuclear interaction, but anything deeper than that and I’m talking out by Rs

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Dropbear said:

blink

Thank-you Jeannie, but you don’t look good in that outfit.

Is the half-life an inherent immutable property of an isotope?

yes.

Well clearly it is not, if the physicists mentioned by PM are correct. Even if the fluctuations are small.

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Thank-you Jeannie, but you don’t look good in that outfit.

Is the half-life an inherent immutable property of an isotope?

yes.

Well clearly it is not, if the physicists mentioned by PM are correct. Even if the fluctuations are small.

a half life is a statistical property… there is no such thing as a half life for an individual atom.

so fluctuaussies..

Dropbear said:

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

yes.

Well clearly it is not, if the physicists mentioned by PM are correct. Even if the fluctuations are small.

a half life is a statistical property… there is no such thing as a half life for an individual atom.

so fluctuaussies..

Fluctuasians too.

A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with the rotation of the sun’s core

Read more at: http://phys.org/news202456660.html#jCp

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

morrie said:

Well clearly it is not, if the physicists mentioned by PM are correct. Even if the fluctuations are small.

a half life is a statistical property… there is no such thing as a half life for an individual atom.

so fluctuaussies..

Fluctuasians too.

A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with the rotation of the sun’s core

Read more at: http://phys.org/news202456660.html#jCp

seems to be saying an outside influence is responsible for small changes in the statistical decay rate .. that doesn’t change the assumption that without outside influence, the decay rate should not fluctuate ..

if I’m reading that right

Dropbear said:

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

a half life is a statistical property… there is no such thing as a half life for an individual atom.

so fluctuaussies..

Fluctuasians too.

A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with the rotation of the sun’s core

Read more at: http://phys.org/news202456660.html#jCp

seems to be saying an outside influence is responsible for small changes in the statistical decay rate .. that doesn’t change the assumption that without outside influence, the decay rate should not fluctuate ..

if I’m reading that right

Yes. But who said anything about excluding outside influences? Immutable is immutable.

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

morrie said:

Fluctuasians too.

A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with the rotation of the sun’s core

Read more at: http://phys.org/news202456660.html#jCp

seems to be saying an outside influence is responsible for small changes in the statistical decay rate .. that doesn’t change the assumption that without outside influence, the decay rate should not fluctuate ..

if I’m reading that right

Yes. But who said anything about excluding outside influences? Immutable is immutable.

im talking about point sized atoms in a vacuum..

Dropbear said:

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

seems to be saying an outside influence is responsible for small changes in the statistical decay rate .. that doesn’t change the assumption that without outside influence, the decay rate should not fluctuate ..

if I’m reading that right

Yes. But who said anything about excluding outside influences? Immutable is immutable.

im talking about point sized atoms in a vacuum..

All atoms are point sized and the whole earth is in a vacuum.

its a physics joke, morrie… calm your tits..

OCDC said:

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Is there any way of changing half-lives?

blink

Thank-you Jeannie, but you don’t look good in that outfit.

Is the half-life an inherent immutable property of an isotope?

So after reading this I conclude that the answers to those questions are “yes” and “no”.

Jenkins and Fischbach collaborated with Peter Sturrock, a professor emeritus of applied physics at Stanford University and an expert on the inner workings of the sun, to examine data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on the rate of decay of the radioactive isotopes silicon-32 and chlorine-36. The team reported in the journal Astroparticle Physics that the decay rate for both isotopes varies in a 33-day recurring pattern, which they attribute to the rotation rate of the sun’s core.

and

Jenkins and Fischbach suggest that the changes in the decay rates are due to interactions with solar neutrinos, nearly weightless particles created by nuclear reactions within the sun’s core that travel almost at the speed of light.

Dropbear said:

its a physics joke, morrie…

You’re kidding…

Now all we need to do is harvest and store neutrinos and it’s all good!

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

its a physics joke, morrie…

You’re kidding…

that is often the nature of jokes.

OCDC said:

Now all we need to do is harvest and store neutrinos and it’s all good!

no charge!

Dropbear said:

OCDC said:

Now all we need to do is harvest and store neutrinos and it’s all good!

no charge!

Huzzah!

morrie said:

Dropbear said:

seems to be saying an outside influence is responsible for small changes in the statistical decay rate .. that doesn’t change the assumption that without outside influence, the decay rate should not fluctuate ..

if I’m reading that right

Yes. But who said anything about excluding outside influences? Immutable is immutable.

I think it’s fair enough to exclude being bombarded by particles that can cause weak interactions. Generally, ambient neutrino (and antineutrino) flux is ignored, since the probability of neutrino interaction is so low. However, it’s not zero, or it would be impossible to build neutrino detectors.

Generally speaking, nuclear reactions are virtually unaffected by things like minor changes to temperature and pressure, but if you push the pressure & temperature up high enough it can have a significant effect, the classic example being stellar nuclear fusion. Even so, the half-life of a proton in the core of the Sun is a couple of billion years.

However, there are some radioisotopes that decay by converting a proton to a neutron, but instead of emitting a positron they absorb an electron, generally one of their own inner orbital electrons. The decay rate of such nuclei is much more sensitive to temperature & pressure changes than the usual radioisotope, since that changes the probability that the inner electrons are close enough to the nucleus to be captured. I expect that the decay rate of such nuclei is also affected if they are bombarded by high energy electrons (low energy electrons would just get repelled by the atom’s outer electrons).

Would the decay rate be reduced to nil if a radioactive particle was frozen to 0 Kelvin?

Asia is where all the gold is going, the fed is manipulating the price to prop up the dollar, the price is falling while there’s a physical shortage, the fed is depleted and will soon default.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-is-the-federal-reserve-tapering-the-gold-market/5366834