The volcano spewed 80 grams of gold a day. Whose "pie from the sky" is it? Let's go! Let's go to collect the gold

Question of the day: Has the price of gold gone crazy again today?

Buying gold, hoarding gold, and selling gold have long become one of the most popular ways to manage your finances. In addition, gold itself has extremely high industrial value. Therefore, although its price has fluctuated over the years, it has always stood firm in the trading market and its position is difficult to be shaken. At the beginning of 2025, the price of gold has been rising all the way, and it is likely to reach a new peak.

If someone said at this time that there is a place in the world where "gold falls from the sky", many people would probably have the same idea - I want to know all the information about this place within one minute!

So, let’s start from an active volcano called Erebus Volcano in the faraway Antarctica.

Heaven-made "blessed land"

Mount Erebus is located on Ross Island in the Ross Sea in western Antarctica. Both the sea and the island are named after their discoverer, British explorer James Ross, and the volcano is named after his ship, HMS Erebus.

In Greek mythology, Erebus refers to a dark area between the living world and the underworld, so the word Erebus is often associated with the underworld. The appearance of Mount Erebus is indeed mysterious and terrifying: its altitude is as high as 3,794 meters, which is higher than Japan's Mount Fuji (3,777 meters); the mountain is almost completely covered with ice and snow, but there is hot steam coming out of the top.

Snow Mountain is steaming

There is a giant jagged mark at the foot of the mountain that is 11 to 12 kilometers long, like a trace left by an alien visitor...

Giant Jagged Mark

What is even more amazing is that the crater will "generously" spew out gold particles. These tiny particles are between 0.1 and 80 microns in diameter, as light as dust, and will settle around the crater nearby, while the farthest ones can be spread by wind up to 1,000 kilometers away. It is estimated that it can spew out about 80 grams of gold in 24 hours a day! According to the current market price of gold, it has to be called a "blessed place".

Scientific Decryption

Hot active volcanoes vs. the icy Antarctic? No matter how you look at it, it's incompatible. Why is it so "weird"? Geologists have something to say:

To put it simply, a volcano is a vent that emerges from cracks in the earth's crust (as well as other structures such as mantle plumes). The climate has no effect on it. Although Antarctica seems to be alone on the map, the Antarctic plate is actually surrounded by several plates, including Africa, Oceania, the Pacific Ocean, and the Americas. There are complex interactions between these plates, resulting in a large number of Antarctic volcanoes. There are 4 volcanoes on Ross Island, where Mount Erebus is located. Mount Erebus is located in a hotspot eruption zone, and the crust where it is located is currently stretching and thinning, so lava is constantly pouring out from the inside. This is the truth behind the perennial overflow of steaming hot air.

As for the jagged marks, they are certainly not traces of aliens. Its scientific name is Erebus Ice Tongue, which is actually the front of a long and narrow glacier. It starts from the slope of the volcano and extends to the bay covered by ice and snow. Every summer, when the sea ice melts, the waves constantly hit the edge of the ice tongue, "carving" out jagged structures like a magic work, and sometimes "hooking" out some deep holes on the edge. In winter, these newly formed structures are surrounded by ice again, and they look like jagged teeth.

Erebus Glacier

After talking about the "mystery of appearance", let's talk about the key issue - the mystery of "spitting gold".

Gold particles

In fact, it is not uncommon to find gold under volcanoes. More than 99% of the gold on Earth is stored deep inside the core-mantle boundary. According to element abundance calculations, the total gold reserves deep inside the Earth are as high as 160 trillion tons. Even if it is divided equally among every resident on Earth, each person can get about 200,000 tons of gold! In comparison, the amount of gold that can be mined today is simply a drop in the bucket. But the problem is that these huge gold deposits are accompanied by high temperatures and high pressures inside the Earth, and it is impossible to get them out with existing technology.

Therefore, the "flow" under the volcano becomes very precious - the deep hydrothermal fluid (magma) from the mantle will enrich a small part of the gold element deep in the earth and bring it to the surface. From ancient times to the present, many gold-rich veins (especially quartz veins) have been formed near active volcanoes, called "hydrothermal gold veins."

But having said that, Mount Erebus is still almost the only "mountain tycoon" that can directly "spit out" solid gold particles. The reason why it is so "scattering wealth" is that there is a lava lake several kilometers deep in the crater on the top of the mountain.

Erebus Lava Lake

As can be seen from the picture, the lava lake is filled with boiling magma, showing a fiery deep red color. This shows that there is a complex magma-gas-fluid system under Mount Erebus. Recent studies have shown that the lava lake is formed because the magma here has a low water content and its volatility decreases when it approaches the surface.

As we all know, the temperature of magma is usually between 900℃ and 1400℃, and the melting point of gold is about 1064℃, so the heat of most volcanic magma is enough to melt gold. But Mount Erebus not only has a lava lake, but the surrounding temperature is also extremely cold, which makes the situation more complicated. An academic article published in Geophysical Research Letters gave a scientific explanation for this: the temperature near Mount Erebus can be as low as -50℃. When the polar cold wind passes over the hot lava lake, gold particles will crystallize from the surface of the magma in a short time, and then be carried into the air by volcanic gases to form gold particles. In addition, zinc and copper elements will be deposited near the crater, which solidify in the form of sphalerite and chalcopyrite, respectively.

In contrast, although there are several other volcanoes with lava lakes in the world (such as Kilauea in Hawaii and Mount Etna in Italy), they release gases faster and in larger quantities, and the temperature is much higher than that in Antarctica, so gold crystal particles do not have time to grow on the surface of the lava and cannot "spray gold."

Is it possible to get rich by picking up gold?

So, the 80 grams of gold that Mount Erebus spews out every day is just wasted on the earth? Can it be mined commercially or used by humans?

The answer is of course no. Not to mention the risk of an active volcano erupting at any time, just collecting gold particles smaller than a hair's diameter on the vast ice field is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

In addition, the extreme climate in Antarctica is also a major threat. In 1979, the New Zealand Airlines crash that shocked the world was caused by the changeable climate, which led to cloud cover. The plane directly hit Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

If anyone still holds onto hope at this time, then the promulgation of the Antarctic Treaty has long since clearly prohibited "any activities related to mineral resources other than scientific research."

To sum up, picking up lost money and getting rich can be regarded as an April Fool’s joke for everyone, or material for dreams!

However, this does not prevent Mount Erebus from having unparalleled scientific research value. In addition to its unique geological structure, the temperature difference near its crater is extremely large - the temperature difference can reach 60°C with a height difference of only 10 cm! Logically, it is difficult to have traces of life in such an extreme environment, but what is even more amazing is that this is not a "forbidden zone for life" - scientists have discovered unique microbial communities that have never been found anywhere else on Earth.

In the future, through the study of these microorganisms, the theory of evolution may be expanded again. They may tell humans how strong life must be to be qualified to survive in the "jungle".