[meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of meteorites(especiallyirons)

From: MexicoDoug <mexicodoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 14:26:11 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <8CE50DA20C979C3-17DC-7789_at_webmail-m034.sysops.aol.com>

Hi Jason

No, your example is so far from perfect, that you are comparing apples
as oranges.

but I do think you could find some data a little better somewhere to
fit your argument if you try hard enough.

Your Nickel and Iron example also is bad: 50% Nickel vs. a common 7%
nickel is a factor of only 7 and quite believable - and see? For a
measley fact of 7 you are citing it as a huge range. That alone should
place you in my camp, so take a risk and agree or make a stand ...
either way it is more interesting to argue with a champion (of a point
of vie, which may well be all bollocks). We are talking about a factor
of 1000 here.

...and: Check your periodic chart. Germanium is definitely much more
closeluy related to Silicon and Carbon, and not the heavy elements
(Atomic number > 60 or so). Isolating heavy elements can be quite
difficult. So, it may well be this characteristic that causes the
seven fold range. Still, not 1000 fold.

As for the "unlikelyhood" of iron meteorites existing by analogy, the
fallacy of that observation is the nature of the elements. Hydrogen
and helium don't usually make alloys and are nort particulary miscilbe
with irons. If you put heavy metals in a centifuge they don't
separate, though as they cool they can create crystal structures as we
know. So unless there was a worldlet formed that perhaps along the
octahedral crystal lattice lines squeezed all the gold out and left the
Iridium (as one example) in, and then the concentrated gold solution
dripped into this particular parent ...

Additionally Iron is a well known anomoly of high abundance due to
special super nova considerations I suppose ..,. and for that reason is
"famous". To suggest a 1000-fold increase in gold is possible, sure
anything is possible and the particular meteorite in question then
would be of enormous significance. You'd think we'd have heard
something about the special golden meteorite by now with 1000 times the
amount of gold of other gold bearing meteorites.

No need to heap praises on Dr. Wasson "foremost world expert" stuff
when mere mortals are just trying to have some fun and utilize their
atrophying brains. I'm sure John hasn't made an analytical mistake,
who would dare to suggest that?! If you would like to follow up with
him or the folks at the Bulletin I think that's a great idea. I don't
have any reasonable doubt, though. The thread started as Mike
wondering about gold content of irons. and my particular focus was to
have a little fun discussing gold in meteorites for anyone interested
and it was great to provoke thought. It would be nioce if John would
pass his lecture notes alsong to the lsit on the subject of trace metal
separation in meteorites and the meaning of it in terms of
classification tools. But then it wouldn't be much fun and I'd be
better off just tryijg to audit one of his classes. If this particular
meteorite is so exceptional, I'm sure someone will speak up and tell us
about it. Is it Darryl's meteorite? He'd be the first I'd ask.
Honestly, I just tried to look up who's it was now, but I don't really
know. Now on to surviving the day

Kindest wishes
Do


-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid at gmail.com>
To: Meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tue, Oct 4, 2011 12:55 pm
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of
meteorites(especiallyirons)


Hello Doug, All,
We're looking at an iron meteorite, which is a piece of material in
which predominantly heavy elements have been sorted and accumulated
through processes that took place over billions of years. Saying that
gold is uncommon in the solar system doesn't mean much; we know that
differentiation has created meteorites with upwards of 50% Ni, so
anomalous concentrations of various heavy elements don't strike me as
strange at all. NWA 859 (Taza) is a perfect example with an average
of ~2200 ppm Ge (observed range of 1500-5000 ppm).

One might as well state that it is unlikely for iron meteorites to
exist at all because hydrogen and helium make up such a large portion
of the mass in the universe/solar system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Abundance_of_elements_in_the_Universe

I'd prefer to trust the basic analytical work of one of the world's
foremost experts on iron meteorites in this case. Of course, errors
do make it into the bulletin with some regularity, often due to human
error when the data is being transferred.
If in doubt, contact the folks who manage the bulletin.
Regards,
Jason


On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 9:31 PM, MexicoDoug <mexicodoug at aim.com> wrote:
> Hi Mike, Stuart and fellow astrochemisticists,
>
> The Bulletin is not a peer reviewed place, it is just the world being
held
> on a few Atlas' shoulders who are nice enough to slave over it and an
> occasional inaccuracy could happen. ?Perhaps it was an issue of
optical
> character recognition since mu, the prefix for micro (as in
micrograms)
> looks a lot like an m, if you put your astronomer's cap on you'd
suspect
> that the simple explanation it is just a run of the mill typo that
will now
> be corrected.
>
> But ... since we haven't analyzed this meteorite, we can't be sure.
>
> For my argument that it is hogwash that this meteorite would have all
that
> gold (so, the bigger picture is, that don't spread the idea that
there are
> up to 48 grams of gold in a 32 Kg chunk of iron meteorite or folks
will
> forget where it came from and the next thing we know the newspapers
will be
> proclaiming that meteorites are loaded with gold).
>
> OK my argument, referencing Anders & Ebihara, 1982, yes the same
Anders that
> (karmaca) Martin kindly contacted not too long ago who invented the
term
> "poor man's space probe" for meteorites, showed that in the Solar
system
> there is nearly one hundred-million times more iron than gold in the
> elemental abundances in the Solar System. ?Well, if an iron meteorite
has in
> round numbers, 900 mg/g of iron (90%), then moving the decimal over 7
zeros,
> we get 0.000009 mg Au/g, which is 0.009 mg/g which is 9 ug/g.
?Granted, 9 is
> off by a factor of 6x more than is reported for the meteorite but at
least
> we are not a factor of nearly 200 off (1500 ug/g = 1.5 mg/g).
>
> That's all I can say, based on a nice guy's work from 1982... but I'm
less
> peer reviewed than the Bulletin so we need someone who is closer to
the
> analysis. ?Or, perhaps go through a bunch of irons with published
analyses
> and just see if anything is over say, 10 ug/g, in which case that
would make
> a far more interesting story than a footnote to an analysis on what
star
> made all that gold and why. ?Was it the home star of Girl from the
Golden
> Atom? ?Did their society get obliterated? ?Did the incredible
shrinking ray
> malfunction when reforming their marriage ring? ?And what of our
adventurous
> and debonair young and gifted chemist? ?Stay tuned till next time ;-)
>
> Kindest wishes
> Doug
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Gilmer <meteoritemike at gmail.com>
> To: MexicoDoug <mexicodoug at aim.com>
> Cc: Meteorite-list <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Mon, Oct 3, 2011 11:00 pm
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of
> meteorites(especiallyirons)
>
>
> Hi Doug and List,
>
> It sounded awfully high to me also, but what do I know? ?LOL
>
> Quoted below is the text from the write-up. ?Notice, the gold content
> is the only element listed in milligrams.
>
> Here is the text from the Met Bull write-up :
>
> Northwest Africa 6932 (NWA 6932)
> (Northwest Africa)
> Found: 2008
> Classification: Iron meteorite (ungrouped)
> History: Reportedly found in the Algerian Desert
>
> Petrography: Plessitic octahedrite with isolated (<5% of area) sparks
> and spindles of kamacite; longest bands are ~8 mm long and 0.2 mm
> wide. The material may be reheated; the fine plessite has a granular
> appearance and there are small dark ellipses that may reflect
> resorption of phosphide. No heat altered rim was recognized. Stucture
> Opl.
>
> Geochemistry: Composition: 4.51 mg/g Co, 69.8 mg/g Ni, 82.4 ?g/g Ga,
> 380 ?g/g Ge, 12.0 ?g/g As, 4.12 ?g/g Ir, and 1.49 mg/g Au. The
> meteorite has no close compositional relatives. For example, in the Co
> range from 6.2 to 7.5 mg/g, no ungrouped iron has a Au content within
> 20% and only Guin and Laurens County have Ir contents within 20% of
> that in this iron, but these irons differ in several other
> compositional respects.
>
> Specimens: Several additional masses are known.
>
> Best regards,
>
> MikeG
>
> PS - I am having internet connectivity issues and my connection is
> running about as well as a 500-pound man right now. ?So I think I will
> sign off until tomorrow morning and hopefully it improves then. LOL
>
> --
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

> --------
> Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
>
> Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com
> Facebook - http://tinyurl.com/42h79my
> News Feed - http://www.galactic-stone.com/rss/126516
> Twitter - http://twitter.com/galacticstone
> EOM -
http://www.encyclopedia-of-meteorites.com/collection.aspx?id=1564
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

> --------c
> On 10/3/11, MexicoDoug <mexicodoug at aim.com> wrote:
>>
>> No way Mike, that there are 48 grams of gold in that 32 Kg hunk of
>
> tkw.
>>
>> ... Unless this is such an anomoly that comes from the Star of the
>> Woman of the Golden Atom, I think none of this makes any sense and
>
> that
>>
>> the units are micrograms per gram ( ?g/g ), and if that is the case
>> there is not 48 grams of gold in them thar TKW, haha, more like a
>
> total
>>
>> of 0.03 grams in the whole 32 Kg mass to go refining. ?And if you
read
>> it somewhere, there is the possibility that the reference is wrong.
>> Was the article peer reviewed? ?(my comment isn't ;-))
>>
>> Kindest wishes
>> Doug
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Gilmer <meteoritemike at gmail.com>
>> To: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
>> Cc: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>> Sent: Mon, Oct 3, 2011 9:45 pm
>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of
>> meteorites(especiallyirons)
>>
>>
>> Hi Gang,
>>
>> I was just curious about exactly how much gold is bound up inside a
>> meteorite with a higher than average content, like the one in this
>> example.
>>
>> Personally, I share the same sentiment as most of you - it would be
>> heresy to destroy a meteorite to extract something that is available
>> here on Earth, even if it wasn't cost-prohibitive.
>>
>> At 41 years old, I have made it this far in life with terrible math
>> skills, so this old dog isn't going to take any refresher courses. ?I
>> was hoping one of the more skilled (and intelligent) members would
act
>> as a human calculator and cipher this question for me. ?:)
>>
>> So in this particular case, the 32kg iron meteorite contains ~1.5
troy
>> ounces of gold, with a current market value of ~$2550.
>>
>> What sparked my curiosity was the apparently high gold content that
>> was measured in milligrams and not the usual micrograms one expects
to
>> see.
>>
>> One last question, perhaps rhetorical in a sense, has anyone ever
seen
>> gold in a meteorite? ?I mean, has there ever been a visible "bleb" or
>> gold inclusion in a meteorite? ?Or is all of the gold bound up on a
>> molecular level and invisible to the naked eye and 10x loupe?
>>
>> I guess there won't be a gold rush to the asteroid belt....
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> MikeG
>> --
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
>> --------
>> Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
>>
>> Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com
>> Facebook - http://tinyurl.com/42h79my
>> News Feed - http://www.galactic-stone.com/rss/126516
>> Twitter - http://twitter.com/galacticstone
>> EOM -
>
> http://www.encyclopedia-of-meteorites.com/collection.aspx?id=1564
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
>> --------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/3/11, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> 1.49 mg per gram is one part in 671.
>>> 1/671 of 32 kg is 47.7 grams of gold.
>>> There are 31 grams per troy ounce; gold
>>> is priced in troy ounces; there are 1.537
>>> troy ounces oif gold in that 32 kg, or
>>> $2551.94 at today's (10/03/11) price.
>>>
>>> Cost you more than that to extract it...
>>>
>>>
>>> Sterling K. Webb
>>>
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
>> -
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Stuart McDaniel" <actionshooting at carolina.rr.com>
>>> To: "Michael Gilmer" <meteoritemike at gmail.com>;
>>> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 7:57 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of
>>> meteorites(especiallyirons)
>>>
>>>
>>>> Oops, I was wrong.....It would be
>>>>
>>>> 32,000gr / 1.49mg = 21475 mg
>>>>
>>>> 21,475/1000 = 21.475 gr
>>>>
>>>> Right, anyone??
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Stuart McDaniel
>>>> Lawndale, NC
>>>> Secr.,
>>>> Cleve. Co. Astronomical Society
>>>> IMCA #9052
>>>> Member - KCA, KBCA, CDUSA
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Michael Gilmer
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 8:33 PM
>>>> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>> Subject: [meteorite-list] Gold and Iridium content of meteorites
>>>> (especiallyirons)
>>>>
>>>> Hi List,
>>>>
>>>> In perusing through the latest additions to the Met Bulletin today,
>
> I
>>>>
>>>> was reading the compositional data for NWA 6932 (iron, ungrouped).
>
> I
>>>>
>>>> noticed that the gold (Au) content was listed at 1.49mg/g. ?Is this
>>>> sort of data as straight-forward as it appears, or is there more to
>>
>> it
>>>>
>>>> that this layman is missing? ?In other words, how much gold is in
>>
>> this
>>>>
>>>> meteorite? ?The TKW of this meteorite is 32kg. ?So, with 1000g in a
>>>> kilo, and 1000mg in a gram, how much gold is in this celestial hunk
>>
>> of
>>>>
>>>> iron? ?(my math is horrible)
>>>>
>>>> Second question, what is highest known gold content in a meteorite
>>
>> and
>>>>
>>>> what meteorite is it?
>>>>
>>>> Third question, some meteorites also have high iridium content.
>
> What
>>>>
>>>> is the highest known iridium content in a meteorite?
>>>>
>>>> I am not suggesting in any way that meteorites should be refined or
>>>> melted down to extract their precious metals content, but given the
>>>> high value of metals such as gold and iridium, has any profiteer
>>
>> tried
>>>>
>>>> such an endeavour? ?Or would the process be too complex and
>>
>> expensive?
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> MikeG
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
>> --------
>>>>
>>>> Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
>>>>
>>>> Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com
>>>> Facebook - http://tinyurl.com/42h79my
>>>> News Feed - http://www.galactic-stone.com/rss/126516
>>>> Twitter - http://twitter.com/galacticstone
>>>> EOM -
>>>> http://www.encyclopedia-of-meteorites.com/collection.aspx?id=1564
>>>>
>>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
>> --------
>>>>
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Received on Tue 04 Oct 2011 02:26:11 PM PDT