There may be a titanic gold mine beneath Hawaii, a reserve so vast that it alone surpasses all the gold ever mined in the history of mankind. This is supported by a group of researchers from the University of Göttingen, who recently detected traces of ruthenium in Hawaiian volcanic rocks: an element which, on a geological level, is closely connected to the presence of gold. And if the theory is confirmed, it would be one of the most disconcerting discoveries ever made from a mineral, environmental and even socioeconomic point of view.
Although the protagonist of the discovery is apparently ruthenium, gold is the real element at the center of attention. In fact, gold and ruthenium are not just precious metals: they are also geological brothers, often present in the same mining environments. And it’s no coincidence. Both form deep down, and slowly rise through the rocks of the Earth’s mantle.
German researchers have detected significant quantities of ruthenium and tungsten in the basaltic rocks of Hawaii, materials that should not be there in such concentrations… if they had not come directly from the planet’s core, where most of Earth’s gold is supposedly stored. It is a shocking fact, because it suggests that beneath the surface of those volcanic islands an endless gold deposit, still intact, still inaccessible, may be hidden.
One of the key clues is that these rocks do not only belong to the Earth’s crust, but come from deeper areas of the mantle, where the fusion of materials has transported, over geological eras, impressive quantities of noble metals.
There is enough gold in the core to cover the Earth
The data emerging from the studies are surprising: according to estimates, 99.99% of our planet’s gold is still found in its core, well below the earth’s crust. There would be enough gold to cover every centimeter of the Earth’s surface with a layer 46 centimeters thick. But this immense wealth remains, at least for now, only theoretical.
Extraction, in fact, is not even remotely possible with current technologies. It will take millions of years for that gold to slowly rise to the surface, making it accessible to human beings. And even then, we will still have to wait decades between the discovery of the deposit and the start of any extraction operations.
An eloquent example is that of the Bushveld deposit in South Africa, discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, but not actually exploited until much later. Gold resources, as we know, have geological, not human, times. And just as our generation has reaped the fruits of discoveries made millennia ago, this new potential deposit will also, in all likelihood, be a legacy for those who come after us.
A metal that could lose its value?
If we ever one day managed to access these deep gold reserves, the world would change radically. Gold, until now a symbol of power, wealth and rarity, could become as common as iron. So what would happen to its uses, its value, its symbolic weight?
The availability of gold in industrial quantities could change global economic balances, create new environmental problems linked to extraction and even alter our cultural relationship with the concept of “precious”.
For now, however, it remains only a remote possibility. A discovery that invites us to reflect on how little we know about our planet, and how, often, true wealth is not in what we can exploit immediately, but in what we learn to wait for.
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