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Thursday, November 7, 2024

Alchemy


Western Australian Gold -- Off the Charts! But there's a problem.
Orophilia

Fascinating. This business of extracting gold may as well be black magic. I can understand how chemicals could react and change the contents of a mixture, but how does heating a mixture in a furnace result in all the gold collecting into one small pellet? And what happened to the rest of the mixture? Did the lead evaporate? It's possible, but seems like a bad idea.

Anyway, reminds me of a passage from the 3rd volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, where the nearly dead Isaac Newton is supervising a gold test / measurement operation in the Tower of London. Neal's explanation was detailed and clear, but just like this video, it made no sense.

1 comment:

  1. Se the movie "The Sisters Brothers" for an interesting tale of locating gold.

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