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News & Views
Economic geology: Gilded by earthquakes -
Dave Craw
doi:10.1038/ngeo1775
Gold is often deposited in Earth's crust by fluids that percolate through rock fractures. Earthquakes cause rock fractures to expand rapidly and could cause the fluids to evaporate, triggering almost instantaneous gold deposition.
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Economic geology: Volatile destruction -
Bruno Scaillet
doi:10.1038/ngeo908
Direct evidence for the role of volatiles in magmatic ore formation has been elusive. Magma degassing at Merapi volcano in Indonesia is found to be directly linked to the selective leaching of metals from sulphide melts that ultimately form ore deposits.
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Letters
Giant uranium deposits formed from exceptionally uranium-rich acidic brines -
Antonin Richard, Christophe Rozsypal, Julien Mercadier, David A. Banks, Michel Cuney, Marie-Christine Boiron & Michel Cathelinea
doi:10.1038/ngeo1338
The Athabasca Basin, Canada, is home to some of the world's largest uranium deposits. Analysis of preserved ore-forming fluids and experimental measurement of uranium solubility in analogous solutions show that the giant deposits could have formed relatively rapidly from extremely uranium-rich brines under acidic conditions.
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High gold concentrations in sulphide-bearing magma under oxidizing conditions -
Roman E. Botcharnikov, Robert L. Linnen, Max Wilke, Francois Holtz, Pedro J. Jugo & Jasper Berndt
doi:10.1038/ngeo1042
Magma transports metals to the Earth's surface to form ore deposits, but only sulphide-undersaturated magmas were thought to be capable of generating large amounts of ore. Laboratory experiments indicate that large volumes of gold ore can also be generated by sulphide-saturated magma, if the redox conditions of the magma are suitable.
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Articles
Magmatic-hydrothermal origin of Nevada's Carlin-type gold deposits -
John L. Muntean, Jean S. Cline, Adam C. Simon & Anthony A. Longo
doi:10.1038/ngeo1338
During the Eocene, profuse magmatism and hydrothermal activity in the Great Basin of western North America produced Earth's second largest concentration of gold in Nevada. An integration of mineral analyses, experimental data and age and isotope data suggests a magmatic source for these deposits.
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Sulphide magma as a source of metals in arc-related magmatic hydrothermal ore fluids -
Olivier Nadeau, Anthony E. Williams-Jones & John Stix
doi:10.1038/ngeo899
The metal content of ore deposits formed during subduction-zone volcanism was thought to be established when the ore fluid separates from the parent magma. Analyses of metal concentrations in erupted melts and the volcanic gases emitted after an eruption in Indonesia reveal that metals can be added to the ore fluid later, during mixing with separated melts.
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