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Gold

Photo shows a section of the Florida-Caribbean map. In lower left, an insert section shows part of the Caribbean treasure ground. Note heavy concentration of numbers (each location a shipwreck) off the Louisiana coast, and in the Florida Keys.

Trending Today

Florida Divers Dig Up $1 Million in Sunken Treasure

Treasure hunters find 300-year-old coins from a Spanish fleet off the Florida coast

A treasure trove of tiny gold spirals from Boeslunde, Denmark

Cool Finds

Archeologists Have Found 2,000 Ancient Golden Spirals and They Have No Idea What They Are

The meaning or purpose behind the spirals is unclear, but they probably were part of a ritual

New Research

Gold Nanoparticles Can Remote Control the Brain

It’s just the latest twist in nanotech that is using gold as medicine

New Research

Millions of Dollars Worth of Gold And Silver Lurk in Sewage

A city with one million people could have $13 million worth of metals in sewage sludge

The lavish displays of the Gold Souk in Dubai are a long way from deforested areas of South America, but a new study connects the two worlds.

Lust for Gold Is Consuming Precious South American Forests

Satellite images show that while the scale of deforestation is small, it is bleeding into protected areas

Iron Age coin hoard

Cool Finds

Hoard of Gold Coins Found in California

In what can only be described as every child’s dream, a couple in California found treasure buried in their backyard

The 13,000-foot high Grasberg mine contains the largest single gold reserve in the world, and the largest copper deposit as well.

The Environmental Disaster That is the Gold Industry

The mining industry has had a devastating impact on ecosystems worldwide. Is there any hope in sight?

How Doctors Are Harnessing the Power of Gold to Fight Cancer

Can the precious metal hold the key to killing cancerous cells?

Alchemy May Not Have Been the Pseudoscience We All Thought It Was

Although scientists never could quite turn lead into gold, they did attempt some noteworthy experiments

Tolkien’s Dwarves Would Have Needed 38 Mini-Nuclear Plants to Melt All That Gold So Quickly

Unless those dwarf furnaces were burning some sort of Middle-earth super fuel, in real life Smaug probably would have just eaten the dwarves

The lifestyles of the modern-day prospectors are not so far removed from that of the forty-niners.

There’s a New Breed of Forty-Niners Rushing to the Pacific

Lured by the soaring price of the precious metal, prospectors are heading for the California hills like it’s 1849 all over again

To find flecks of gold, workers devour the rainforest floor with water cannons. "There are a lot of accidents," says one. "The sides of the hole can fall away, can crush you."

The Devastating Costs of the Amazon Gold Rush

Spurred by rising global demand for the metal, miners are destroying invaluable rainforest in Peru’s Amazon basin

Gold bullion from the National Bank of Poland

What Is Rarer Than Gold?

Other than the human tendency for imitating magpies, gold really isn’t all that special

President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the double eagle in 1905. He later pronounced the gold piece to be “the best coin that has been struck for 2,000 years.”

Golden Grail

Few U.S. coins are rarer than the never circulated 1933 double eagle, melted down after the nation dropped the gold standard

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Midas Touch

To clean highly polluted groundwater, Michael Wong has developed a detergent based on gold

In most Akan states, gold-ornamented sandals identify a ruler. It is taboo for a chief to walk barefoot; to do so, followers believed, would invite disaster.

West African Gold: Out of the Ordinary

The inventive goldwork and royal regalia of Ghana’s Akan people —on display in a new exhibition— are drawn, strikingly, from daily life

A Brush with Gold

Sculptures by a modern master using age-old techniques will be on public view for the first time

This small piece of yellow metal is believed to be the first piece of gold discovered in 1848 at Sutter's Mill in California, launching the gold rush.

A Metal Far From Base

A tiny flake started the rush to California, but where gold is concerned, that isn’t the half of it

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The Lure of Gold

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