“Solid gold can be deposited in Earth’s crust ‘almost instantaneously’ during earthquakes, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The gold is formed when a tremor splits open a fluid-filled cavity in the Earth’s crust, causing a sudden drop in pressure. This, in turn, causes the fluid to expand rapidly and evaporate, and any gold particles that had been dissolved in it to ‘precipitate almost immediately’, said a Nature press release. The researchers said much of the world’s known gold was derived from quarts veins that were formed during geological periods of mountain building as long as three billion years ago.”
