Fire and Brimstone

The processes that bring gold up to the surface from deep in Earth’s Mantle rely on the sulpher that bubbles beneath volcanoes. Hence, the fire and brimstone. Gold deposits are often associated with volcanic activity and tectonic processes. This is of course a hypthesis as the South African gold deposits at Johannesburg appear to follow the rim of an impact crater. It probably did of course result in an upwelling of deeper material so the consensus opinion may still be on song. However, it is one of those ideas that relies on Plate Tectonics theory – and the existence of a subduction zone, or zones. This involves two papers, one by the Swiss and the other by the Chinese. The latter is interesting as they have recently found a huge gold field. The Chinese paper also concluded that the uptake of gold to the surface, as a constituent of magma, required a specific set of temperatures and pressures where water is heated and oxidised, and as Earth’s crust sinks, gold and trisulphide bond to form a suluble complex. It is the sulphide, they allege, that allows the gold to rise up. The Swiss experiment, on the other hand, involved bisulphide as well as hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide, all present at magmatic temperatures. See https://www.sciencealert.com/it-literally-takes-fire-and-brimstone-to-transport-gold-to-earths-surface …