But these days, finding a nugget isn’t too tricky: Much of the world’s gold is mined from natural veins of quartz ... would start appearing in a solid form atop the quivering slabs.

Those of you paying careful attention to the previous paragraph may have noticed a problem here: If gold is so difficult to get into its pure form, how do natural processes create enormous chunks ...

The natural scarcity of the mineral insulates ... Part of the decline is due to a decrease in “low-hanging fruit” in the form of high-volume gold discoveries. In the past few years, the ...

These accumulate over time until they form into nuggets ... “In essence, the quartz acts like a natural battery, with gold as the electrode, slowly accumulating more gold with each seismic ...

To study how earthquakes help form the gold nuggets ... “In essence, the quartz acts like a natural battery, with gold as the electrode slowly accumulating more gold with each seismic event ...