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Speaker 1: On a train coming from Washington. The worthy Minister had

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Speaker 1: reposed himself in his birth when in a burst of light,

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Speaker 1: the Lord appeared to him and gave into his keeping

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Speaker 1: the secret of how gold could be taken from the sea.

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Speaker 1: Mr Joern, again having the mystery direct from heaven, was

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Speaker 1: not one to flaunt it in the faces of the

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Speaker 1: uninspired scientists, but kept it locked in his own heart,

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Speaker 1: as all such revelations should be welcome to stot to

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Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey are

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Speaker 1: you welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind? My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and time Joe McCormick. And that opening

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Speaker 1: reading was from the Hartford Current, from an article from

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Speaker 1: January seventeenth, ninety six called Dredging Gold from Seawater. And

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Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this episode. We're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about a great, a fantastic historical gold swindle. But before

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Speaker 1: we get into the historical details, I've got a question

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Speaker 1: that I want to think about. This might frame our

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Speaker 1: consideration of this historical episode. Uh. You know how sometimes

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Speaker 1: you see people passing around an article online about some

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Speaker 1: apparently miraculous new technology that really sounds too good to

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Speaker 1: be true. For example, the one that easily comes to

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Speaker 1: my mind is the various proposed reactionless drives that would

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Speaker 1: somehow supposedly move a spacecraft without any propellant or exhaust,

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Speaker 1: apparently in violation of the law of conservation of momentum. Now,

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Speaker 1: whenever one of these things makes the rounds, I see

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Speaker 1: exasperated skeptics responding with, you know, the standard line, if

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Speaker 1: something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Now.

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Speaker 1: Of course, I totally agree with their skepticism about these

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Speaker 1: particular technologies, reactionless drives and so forth, But I want

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Speaker 1: to ask it like step back and ask a broader question,

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Speaker 1: which is, how do you actually know when something is

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Speaker 1: too good to be true? If if previously unexplored frontiers

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Speaker 1: of science are involved in the case of something like

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Speaker 1: a reactionless drive, actual physicists and aerospace engineers and people

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Speaker 1: like that are probably in a good position to swap

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Speaker 1: the idea down based on years of familiarity with that

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Speaker 1: particular problem space and the solutions available within it um.

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Speaker 1: And of course you know their their knowledge of the

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Speaker 1: general laws of physics and trying to push against those

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Speaker 1: laws throughout a career. But if you're just a regular

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Speaker 1: person without any particular expertise, and somebody comes to you

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Speaker 1: with a claim about some you know, some new technological capability.

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Speaker 1: How do you know when it's too good to be true,

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Speaker 1: especially when the mechanisms that supposedly make possible lie underneath

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Speaker 1: the shroud of sub microscopic chemistry or like invisible fields

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Speaker 1: and forces in physics. I mean, the short answer would

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Speaker 1: be like why, or the counter question would be why

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Speaker 1: are you coming to me with this? You know, if

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Speaker 1: of the you know, if you have some sort of

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Speaker 1: zero gravity um uh technique or you know, whatever the

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Speaker 1: thing happens to be um Like, why why are you

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Speaker 1: coming to me about it? Why are you trying to

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Speaker 1: sell me a product that has to do with it

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Speaker 1: instead of capitalizing on it yourself. Yeah. I think that's

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Speaker 1: a very good point about noticing when these these types

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Speaker 1: of technologies or claims are either being sold to you.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely a red flag if somebody's like

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Speaker 1: trying to get your money or trying to get an investment.

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Speaker 1: It's another thing if there if you're just being told

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Speaker 1: about them and sort of asked to buy in intellectually.

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Speaker 1: But even then there is something that there is an

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Speaker 1: important different between somebody who takes a claim directly to

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Speaker 1: say the popular press on the internet versus hashing it

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Speaker 1: out in in say journals, where experts would be the

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Speaker 1: people arguing about it. Yeah, um, I guess a lot

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Speaker 1: of times it implies that there is a lack of

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Speaker 1: expertise involved, that this is not a like someone who

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Speaker 1: is a professional in their field and there they're claiming

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Speaker 1: to have solved a professional level problem. Um. I think.

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Speaker 1: I think zero gravity, if I remember correctly, is one

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Speaker 1: of these that you see where a lot of amateur,

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Speaker 1: um individuals, I think they have they have solved it,

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Speaker 1: and they end up making like the same mistakes that

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Speaker 1: other people have made in the past, or mistake the

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Speaker 1: you know, the same phenomena as as zero gravity, and

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Speaker 1: they'll then submit it to NASA. I think, sorry, do

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Speaker 1: you mean like anti gravity? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like a like a zero G anti gravity type of technology.

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Speaker 1: I'm not as familiar with those, but yeah, that seems

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Speaker 1: like that would obviously fit right in with the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing I'm thinking about. But like, you can understand

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Speaker 1: how the average person could be easily confused here when

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Speaker 1: thinking about the cutting edge of of technology, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, especially dealing with microscopic or sub microscopic realms,

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Speaker 1: because you can make a list of plenty of examples

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Speaker 1: of real technology that rely on principles of physics and

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Speaker 1: chemistry and biology that are invisible to everyday life, but

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Speaker 1: once they were discovered, they unlocked vast and what really

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Speaker 1: would be almost magical seeming power and wealth when they

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Speaker 1: were first harnessed. You know, you you can think of

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Speaker 1: examples like nuclear power, microprocessors, antibiotics, and to a person

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Speaker 1: who didn't understand the underlying science and couldn't see why

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Speaker 1: it is that these things worked, all of these ideas

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Speaker 1: might have sounded too good to be true. And I

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Speaker 1: think it's this kind of ambiguity that makes the story

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today especially interesting, because today

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Speaker 1: I want to start off by talking about a fascinating

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Speaker 1: historical hoax and swindle that took place in New England

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Speaker 1: near the turn of the twentieth century. Now, Robert, I know, um,

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Speaker 1: you spent part of your life in Eastern Canada, didn't you.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever live? Was it in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia?

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Speaker 1: It was, well, it was Newfoundland, Oh, Newfoundland. Sorry, I

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Speaker 1: said that wrong. No, no, you you said you said

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Speaker 1: it the same way that that people who um who

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Speaker 1: are not of Newfoundland have never lived there often referred

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Speaker 1: to it Newfoundland but not in Newfoundland. Yeah, but yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I lived there as a child for a few years. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's up towards that part of the continent that we're

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Speaker 1: going to travel. So if you if you look at

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Speaker 1: a map and you try to find the easternmost settlement

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Speaker 1: on the United States mainland, what you'll have to do

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Speaker 1: is you'll follow the east coast up the edge of

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Speaker 1: Maine to a point of the US border with Canada.

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Speaker 1: And this part of Maine is just across a body

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Speaker 1: of water called the Bay of Fundy, and it's across

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Speaker 1: the Bay of Fundy from Nova Scotia. Uh So, the

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Speaker 1: easternmost human settlement before you hit Canada is a little

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Speaker 1: coastal town called Lubeck that's spelled lub e C. And

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Speaker 1: today Lubec has a population of something like twelve hundred

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Speaker 1: people or so. It's between twelve hundred and hundred last

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Speaker 1: count I saw, and historically it's it's been kind of

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Speaker 1: a fishing town. It got much of its livelihood from

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Speaker 1: the sea pulling in fish, clams and lobster, stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: But the ocean around Lubec and the Bay of Funding

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Speaker 1: generally is unusual. I was reading from a article by

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Speaker 1: Joyce kryshak in Uh in a magazine about Maine called

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Speaker 1: Down East, and she's writing about the the the ocean

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Speaker 1: in this area. She writes, quote, it's the roiling tide,

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Speaker 1: the heartbeat of the ocean which pounds harder here that

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Speaker 1: makes Lubec feel at once isolated and enchanted in a

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Speaker 1: tangle of islands, channels and ragged bays. The incoming tide

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Speaker 1: clashes against a submerged mountain and the outflow of the St.

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Speaker 1: Croix River. It's that's spelled like c r O I X.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's croy or crawl locally, But

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Speaker 1: she goes on creating chaotic currents, fevered swells, and unusual

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Speaker 1: phenomena like whirlpools and water spouts. Uh. And so part

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Speaker 1: of what makes the sea around the back so unusual

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Speaker 1: is that the whole Bay of Fundy has an enormous

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Speaker 1: tidal range. Now, the Bay of Fundy is again this

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Speaker 1: large body of water between mainland New Brunswick and Nova Scotia,

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Speaker 1: and it has some of the greatest title variation of

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Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. There places deeper towards the head

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Speaker 1: of the bay where the difference between high tide and

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Speaker 1: low tide is close to sixteen meters or more than

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Speaker 1: fifty feet, which is just unbelievable, and especially if you

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Speaker 1: look up pictures of this, it's astonishing to see, like

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Speaker 1: when the sea retreats, how much land is revealed. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: I was wondering what causes this huge tidle variation, and

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Speaker 1: I was reading about it in a short article by

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Speaker 1: a project called Exploring Our Fluid Earth, which is hosted

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Speaker 1: by the University of Hawaii website, and they give a

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Speaker 1: couple of reasons for this huge tidal range. The first

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Speaker 1: is geography, so they say that the bay, you know,

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Speaker 1: they point out that the bay is sort of V shaped,

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Speaker 1: with the wide part of the mouth and the narrow

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Speaker 1: part of the head, and this means as the tide

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Speaker 1: flows into the bay from the mouth toward the head,

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Speaker 1: it gets more and more compressed as it goes. So

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Speaker 1: try to imagine a wave of water flowing into a

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Speaker 1: trough that gets narrower and narrower along its length, where

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Speaker 1: would the compressed water go well as to go vertical

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Speaker 1: as to go up. But the second reason for the

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Speaker 1: title range is that because of the shape of the bay,

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Speaker 1: that the water in the bay forms a standing wave.

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Speaker 1: And the short version of the way this works is

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Speaker 1: that there are there are two different frequencies controlling the

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Speaker 1: waves in the bay. One is the bay's natural resonant frequency,

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Speaker 1: which is the period across which the water tends to

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Speaker 1: slash back and forth within the bay itself, and then

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Speaker 1: the other is the broader tidal frequency, which is the

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Speaker 1: period across which the ocean at large retreats and advances

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Speaker 1: uh against the shore and then the bay of funding.

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Speaker 1: These periods are almost exactly the same length, about twelve

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Speaker 1: and a half hours, so they pile on one another

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Speaker 1: to make these massive differences between high and low tide. Again,

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Speaker 1: maybe around six meters or twenty ft near the mouth

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Speaker 1: of the bay and up to around sixteen meters or

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Speaker 1: more than fifty feet near the head. All of this

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Speaker 1: to say, I think it's the kind of place where

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Speaker 1: if you were a visitor there, you might imagine that

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Speaker 1: someone could work miracles from the sea. There's there's a

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Speaker 1: strong kind of deep ones energy. Yeah, we're talking it

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Speaker 1: just really violent seas at times. And uh and and

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Speaker 1: certainly yeah, you look at these pictures of the tide

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Speaker 1: differential and it's it's staggering. It looks almost if you

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Speaker 1: didn't know what you're looking at, you would think it, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's something apocalyptic has occurred here. Yeah. Uh yeah.

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Speaker 1: They're like great photos of say a marina with docks

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Speaker 1: and boats, and then that that at high tide the

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Speaker 1: boats will be afloat. But then when the c retreats,

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Speaker 1: all the boats are just sort of sitting in the sediment.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, so to the town of Lubeck, into this

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Speaker 1: strange land of lobsters and other worldly tides. In the

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Speaker 1: year of eighteen ninety seven there came a couple of

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Speaker 1: business partners with a really interesting geological scam for the ages.

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Speaker 1: Their claim was they were going to turn the ocean

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Speaker 1: into gold. Now I want to mention a book here

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Speaker 1: because this was one of my major sources. It's a

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Speaker 1: book edited by a scholar named Ronald Pescha, called The

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Speaker 1: Great Gold Swindle of Lubeck, Maine from Arcadia Publishing. Most

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Speaker 1: of the text of this book is actually a series

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Speaker 1: of articles written by a journalist or a local writer

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Speaker 1: from Lubeck named Kerry C. Bangs for the Lubeck Herald

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Speaker 1: between nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty one, and then

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Speaker 1: these articles were edited and supplemented by Ronald pescha Um. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: as this book makes clear, a lot of the history

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Speaker 1: here is laced through with conflicting accounts from different sources.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the original local reporting from the Lubec

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Speaker 1: Herald in the eighteen nineties is lost, and so it's

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Speaker 1: only known through Bangs secondary retelling in the nineteen forties.

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Speaker 1: So this is a story where not all of the

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Speaker 1: details are are solidly established and agreed upon. But we'll

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Speaker 1: do our best, I think to to keep to the

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Speaker 1: likeliest broad strokes. So these two guys who arrived in

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Speaker 1: Lubec in eight They were Charles Fisher, who was a

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Speaker 1: native of Martha's Vineyard who had previously been a floor

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Speaker 1: walker in a Brooklyn department store. And the other was

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Speaker 1: Reverend Prescott Ford Journe, again also originally from Martha's Vineyard,

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Speaker 1: but he became a Baptist minister. He was educated at

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Speaker 1: Brown University and he had preached at churches from New

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Speaker 1: England to Florida, and he was reportedly given to somewhat

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Speaker 1: utopian thinking, especially after reading Edward Bellamy's influential utopian novel

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Speaker 1: Looking Backward, Robert for you, I've included a picture of

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Speaker 1: Journey in here. I was trying to think for a

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Speaker 1: while what he looks like, and I realized, to me,

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Speaker 1: he looks like the brother in Napoleon Dynamite. Do you

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Speaker 1: remember Kip? Oh, yeah, I do. I have to to say,

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Speaker 1: when I looked at him, my guy kind of a

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Speaker 1: William Sanderson vibe, you know, Oh yeah, I can see that,

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Speaker 1: or at least he looks like that would be my

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Speaker 1: first casting choice. If I could pick, you know, any

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Speaker 1: actor from any any era and sort of they can

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Speaker 1: choose what age they they are in the casting, I'd

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Speaker 1: probably go with William Sanderson. So he got a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a JF. Sebastian kind of thing going on. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: from Blade Runner, probably his most famous role, but he

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Speaker 1: he's been a ton of things. He was in Deadwood,

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Speaker 1: he was in True Blood, but older listeners may also

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Speaker 1: remember him from New Heart, the old sitcom which he

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Speaker 1: was one of the trio Larry Darrell and Darrell right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: flanked by his brother Darrell and his other brothers Darrell. Yes.

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Speaker 1: So these two newcomers to Luke back Journe again and Fisher.

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Speaker 1: They least an old gristmill in North Lubec that, in

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Speaker 1: its days of grinding grain had been powered by the tide.

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Speaker 1: And I got into this. I didn't really know anything

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Speaker 1: about it beforehand, but tidal mills themselves are pretty interesting subject.

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Speaker 1: They essentially work on the principle of water wheel, except

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Speaker 1: instead of using natural continuous water flow like in a

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Speaker 1: river or creek to power the wheel, they accumulate water

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Speaker 1: into a controlled pond or reservoir during high tide and

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Speaker 1: then release that water through a gate to drive the wheel.

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Speaker 1: Well that's interesting, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But so

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Speaker 1: so this mill in North Lubec used to be used

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Speaker 1: to grind grain, and they took it over and it

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Speaker 1: would become the first plant of what Journagin and Fisher

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Speaker 1: would call the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company. Uh. Now, the

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Speaker 1: purchase of this property in Lubec was not the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the scam. Jernagin and Fisher had already scammed some

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Speaker 1: investors by staging Demons stations for a number of potential

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Speaker 1: investors further south in New England, and the basic scenario

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Speaker 1: for these demonstrations went like this. The Reverend Journegan would

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Speaker 1: invite the investors to gather on a dock or a

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Speaker 1: seaside shed to watch as he prepared this device that

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Speaker 1: he was calling the accumulator, and it was some kind

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Speaker 1: of box into which mercury and sometimes other chemicals were inserted.

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Speaker 1: I've read it described in some places as lead lined,

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Speaker 1: in other places as zinc lined, but apparently you had

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Speaker 1: to put mercury into it. And in order to to

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Speaker 1: assure his investors, he allowed them to supply their own chemicals.

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Speaker 1: So it's like a bring your own mercury party. So

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Speaker 1: they show up with the quicksilver, put it into the box,

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Speaker 1: and then he would apparently apply an electrical current to

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Speaker 1: the box via a battery and then lower it down

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Speaker 1: into the sea, where at least what he claimed was

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Speaker 1: that the seawater could sluice in and that something about

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Speaker 1: the way this box worked would accumulate old content from

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Speaker 1: the sea water itself. It would be extracted by the mercury,

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Speaker 1: and then I believe the idea was that it would

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Speaker 1: form an amalgam with the mercury, and then the box

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Speaker 1: would be retrieved some hours later, maybe in the morning

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Speaker 1: or something, and voila, there was actually gold inside. And

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Speaker 1: so some of these early investors they were astonished and

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Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, I'm convinced. Take my money, you know,

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Speaker 1: I want to stake in your company now. Before we

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Speaker 1: pursued the hoax any further and talk about how it worked,

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Speaker 1: I think it would be worth asking the question where

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Speaker 1: on Earth did the underlying scientific premise here come from?

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Speaker 1: Where where did he get this idea of extracting gold

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Speaker 1: from sea water? Well, it turns out that this actually

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Speaker 1: wasn't without scientific precedent, and maybe we should take a

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Speaker 1: quick break and then when we come back we can

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Speaker 1: talk about the idea of of gold and solution throughout

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Speaker 1: the oceans. Thank alright, we're back. We're talking about the

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Speaker 1: claim that one can simply turned to seawater, collected, accumulated,

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Speaker 1: and produced gold. Right now, we're focused in this episode

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Speaker 1: on on a hoax and swindle in in New England history,

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Speaker 1: but there is actually some scientific basis to the idea

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Speaker 1: that gold could be extracted from seawater and for a

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Speaker 1: quick history of the awareness of this fact, the idea

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Speaker 1: that gold and other precious metals could at least potentially

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Speaker 1: be extracted from the ocean. I found a good overview

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Speaker 1: in a paper by a historian named Brett JA. Stubbs,

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Speaker 1: published in the journal Australasian Historical Archaeology in two thousand eight,

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Speaker 1: and the paper is called Delightfully Sunbeams from Cucumbers an

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century gold from seawater extraction scheme in northern

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Speaker 1: New South Wales. So Stubbs is primarily covering a different

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Speaker 1: gold from the ocean plot that took place in Australia

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Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, but it's introductory section has

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Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff here, and the title actually

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Speaker 1: comes that the sunbeams from cucumbers comes from a passage

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Speaker 1: in the paper where Stubbs mentioned the there was a

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Speaker 1: judge named Justice Darling. I think he's referring to Baron

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Speaker 1: Charles Darling of England, who at one point compare the

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Speaker 1: quest to extract gold from seawater to a scheme and

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Speaker 1: Guiliver's Travels, where a character spends eight years developing a

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Speaker 1: process to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Now I can only

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Speaker 1: assume that the part of the idea with getting gold

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Speaker 1: out of saltwater probably stems from the reality of panning

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Speaker 1: gold from mountain streams. Um. Again getting into the idea

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Speaker 1: that perhaps if if you're not super aware of how

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Speaker 1: that process is working, you might well extrapol a well,

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Speaker 1: if there's you can get gold out of a stream,

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Speaker 1: then look how much ocean there is, there's got to

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Speaker 1: be even more gold in there. Um. But that doesn't

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Speaker 1: hold up when you really look at how panning for

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Speaker 1: gold works. And um, and I feel like a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of movies and TV, you know, you'll

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Speaker 1: have panning for Gold and it's not really you don't

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Speaker 1: really get a good sense of what's going on. H

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Speaker 1: But I did find that the Cohen Brothers in the

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Speaker 1: film The Ballot of Buster Scrugs, the sequence about the

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Speaker 1: goal about the prospector titled All Gold Canyon, was actually

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Speaker 1: pretty informative. You know. It does a nice overview of

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Speaker 1: just how it basically works. You've seen this, right, Joe

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Speaker 1: Is where Tom Waits plays the prospector. I have to

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Speaker 1: admit I actually haven't finished the movie yet. I started

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Speaker 1: watching it one day, and I loved it. But it's

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Speaker 1: it's one of those happens all too often now in

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Speaker 1: my life where I start a movie that I like

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Speaker 1: and I don't finish it, not for any reason of disinterest. Well,

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Speaker 1: I encourage you to press on, certainly for this this

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Speaker 1: this particular segment. Uh, it's an anthology film for anyone

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Speaker 1: who's not familiar with that takes place in the Old West.

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Speaker 1: So in this one, we meet a gold prospector and

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Speaker 1: he's out there panning for gold and uh and basically, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna spoil any of the plot,

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Speaker 1: but it does a pretty good job of showing you

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Speaker 1: that the planning is generally not a lucrative enterprise in

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Speaker 1: and of itself, but it's a way to search for

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Speaker 1: gold deposits in nearby rock that that can be mined.

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Speaker 1: So you find some some gold us showing up in

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Speaker 1: this mountain stream, well then you can use that to

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Speaker 1: try and figure out where in this mountainous area you

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Speaker 1: might find a proper vein of gold that you can

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Speaker 1: then dig for. But you know, that's one thing, But

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Speaker 1: what would the oceanic version of this b right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the fluid dynamics of the situation are far more complicated.

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Speaker 1: The sea itself is far vaster. Um. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: when you start looking at the facts involved, Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: far from a one to one here, right, And so

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Speaker 1: the idea of extracting gold from seawater is actually based

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Speaker 1: in more of like the misconception version of of panning

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Speaker 1: for gold, where you're not looking for a vein of

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Speaker 1: gold to exploit, but you are trying to take advantage

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Speaker 1: of the fact that there is actually gold in the

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Speaker 1: water itself. It's dissolved in there. There's these little tiny

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Speaker 1: molecules of gold throughout the oceans. Um. So, going back

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Speaker 1: to Brett JA. Stubbs paper, beginning in the second half

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, there were a number of can

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Speaker 1: mists and geologists that started to speculate about this. They

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Speaker 1: started to say, you know what, I think that you

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Speaker 1: probably can extract precious metals of all kinds from the sea.

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Speaker 1: One early example is in the year eighteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement

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Speaker 1: of Science, the American chemist Henry Wortz suggested that all

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Speaker 1: of the water in the world's oceans quote may contain

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Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty million times more gold

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Speaker 1: than the total present wealth of mankind in this metal.

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Speaker 1: And this was, in Stubbs words, despite its presence in

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Speaker 1: concentrations that were so small as to be back to words, quote,

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Speaker 1: beyond the limits of our present modes of chemical detection,

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Speaker 1: so words couldn't find it yet, but just reasoned, based

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Speaker 1: on some other principles of geology and chemistry, that there's

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Speaker 1: probably a huge amount of precious metal just existing in

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Speaker 1: solution throughout the ocean. And Stubbs claims that the first

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Speaker 1: attempts to actually measure the concentration of gold and see

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Speaker 1: water we're probably carried out by the English chemist Edwards Sanstat,

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Speaker 1: who was known for developing techniques in the eighteen sixties

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Speaker 1: for the production of purified magnesium. But Stubbs writes, quote

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Speaker 1: Sanstat experimented with samples of seawater from the coast of

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Speaker 1: the Isle of Man and concluded that they contained gold,

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Speaker 1: but in a proportion certainly less than one grain in

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Speaker 1: the ton, and a grain here is is a unit

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Speaker 1: of measure that is equivalent to about sixty five milligrams,

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Speaker 1: so there's not a lot of it in there. Continuing

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Speaker 1: with Stubbs, he went as far as to suggest, however,

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Speaker 1: that one of his methods might be practically applied to

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Speaker 1: the exploitation of the golden seawater, which might be received

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Speaker 1: at high water in large tanks and emptied at low water.

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Speaker 1: Sanstat emphasized in eighteen ninety two that the amount of

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Speaker 1: golden sea water was quote far less than one grain

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Speaker 1: per ton. But basically he's proposing that, well, it might

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Speaker 1: be possible to have some sort of like passive system

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Speaker 1: in place that would gradually extract this low quantity of

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Speaker 1: gold from the ocean, right, I mean there's a paradox involved, right,

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Speaker 1: So there there were other researchers that soon agreed with Sanstad,

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Speaker 1: and they emphasized this paradox. In eighteen ninety four, there

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Speaker 1: was a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney

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Speaker 1: named Archibald liver Sage who started running experiments and concluded

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Speaker 1: that the density of gold and the ocean was somewhere

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Speaker 1: between half a grain and one grain per ton of water.

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Speaker 1: And remember a grain is about sixty five milligrams. So

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Speaker 1: Liversedge noted the irony that while the amount of gold

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Speaker 1: contained in the whole of the ocean was just enormous,

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Speaker 1: I mean, far more gold than humans have access to now.

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Speaker 1: It was so spread out and so dilute that the

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Speaker 1: process of capturing it and isolating it would probably cost

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Speaker 1: more than the resulting gold was worth. And several other

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Speaker 1: researchers in the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundreds repeated

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Speaker 1: these experiments, sometimes finding even lower are concentrations of gold

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Speaker 1: than Liver's Edge. But it is clear, at least from

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Speaker 1: from this research that there is gold floating in solution

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Speaker 1: throughout the oceans, and if there were a cheap and

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Speaker 1: efficient way to get it out, you could accessed vast

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Speaker 1: amounts of riches. But that's a big if. And Stubbs

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Speaker 1: notes that in the eight nineties there were many patents

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Speaker 1: for processes to extract gold from seawater. However, he notes

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Speaker 1: that he could only find records of two gold from

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Speaker 1: seawater extraction schemes that were actually put into practice on

430
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: a commercial scale, and both of them failed. One was

431
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,400
Speaker 1: at Hailing Island in southern England, and the other one

432
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: was the main focus of stubbs paper, at Broken Head

433
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: in New South Wales, Australia. I think they were both

434
00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 1: uh they both began in nineteen o four, and these,

435
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: in contrast to the plot by Journe again and and Fisher,

436
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: these were not hoaxes. They were genuine attempts to extract

437
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 1: the gold by chemical means, but they were never able

438
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: to turn a profit, though they were seen as very

439
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: attract to endeavors to a lot of educated people. Apparently

440
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:06,120
Speaker 1: no less a figure than the Nobel Prize winning Scottish

441
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,439
Speaker 1: chemist Sir William Ramsay, who was he was instrumental in

442
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 1: the discovery and isolation of the noble gases. I think

443
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:14,679
Speaker 1: that's what he got his Nobel Prize for um. He

444
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: was convinced that the plant on Haling Island, the one

445
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:20,399
Speaker 1: in southern England, was going to be a success, but

446
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:23,479
Speaker 1: within less than two years of its founding, the company

447
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,680
Speaker 1: operating it had folded and the scheme in New South

448
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: Wales involved It involved sort of what san Stat was saying,

449
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 1: the extraction of sea water up to a reservoir where

450
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 1: it was treated on the way to the reservoir with

451
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 1: lime and iron ox side, and then it was allowed

452
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 1: to settle into a sludge while the water was drawn

453
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 1: off at the top, and then the sludge was to

454
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 1: be treated with cyanide to extract the gold, and apparently

455
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: the Australian plants ceased operation very soon after it started,

456
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 1: possibly due to storm damage, but there's no evidence that

457
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 1: it ever would have been able to turn a profit.

458
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: But anyway, this whole brings me back to that interesting

459
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:05,680
Speaker 1: comparison by Judge Darling the idea of sunbeams from cucumbers,

460
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: because a similar impracticality is actually involved. Cucumbers actually are

461
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: in a sense made out of sunbeams. Right The sunlight

462
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: feeds energy into the plant, which is used to manufacture

463
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: chemical energy in the form of sugars and other tissues.

464
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: And the same energy that came from the sun is

465
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 1: actually still locked up inside the flesh of the cucumber,

466
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: but in a different form, and it would take a

467
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: very lossy conversion process to turn that chemical energy back

468
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: into light. And as Stubs recounts that other chemists in

469
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century examined the same problem trying to

470
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: get precious metals, mainly gold, out of sea water, and

471
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: they could never find a way to make the process

472
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: of getting the gold out cost effective. You could get

473
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: the gold out, but the process was so expensive and

474
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: so inefficient that the gold it produced was never enough

475
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: to to cause you to break even. Uh. And to

476
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,439
Speaker 1: quote from Stubbs quote, the Nobel Prize in chemist Fritz Haber,

477
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: who later developed his own method for extracting gold from seawater,

478
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that the quantities were so small

479
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: and the expense so great that the process could never

480
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,880
Speaker 1: be made profitable. Yeah. Fritz Haber, by the way, gave

481
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: us the haber Bosch process, a method he used in

482
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: industry to synthesize ammonia from nydrogen gas and hydrogen gas.

483
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 1: He's also sometimes referred to as the father of chemical

484
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 1: warfare for his work on weaponized chlorine gas. Yeah. Apparently

485
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: a lot of his interest in extracting gold from seawater,

486
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: back before he realized that it couldn't turn a profit,

487
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: was was related to making money to help Germany payback

488
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 1: its war debt from World War One. So back to

489
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:46,439
Speaker 1: the Lubeck hoax. So where did Joern again get his

490
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: idea to extract gold from seawater? Remember, some sources alleged

491
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: that the idea came to him in a dream or

492
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:55,880
Speaker 1: a heavenly vision. I think he claimed that at some point,

493
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:57,399
Speaker 1: and that's the quote I read at the top of

494
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:01,719
Speaker 1: the episode from the Hartford Current. But he but others

495
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: alleged that this was not a dream, It did not

496
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: come in a vision that the journey and basically read

497
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: about the research of Edward Sonstadt and then he thought, hey,

498
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 1: what if I could do that? And it's also worth

499
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: pointing out where this scheme occurs in history. So this

500
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 1: is going to be in the mid to late eighteen nineties,

501
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 1: which is concurrent with the Klondike gold Rush in Alaska

502
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: and the Yukon territory, So gold fever was in the air.

503
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 1: But in the words of Carrie Bangs quote, it did

504
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: indeed seem less arduous to get the gold from the

505
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: water than from the Alaskan fields. And as someone later

506
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: pointed out, it was even more easy to pick the

507
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: gold from the pockets of stockholders than from either of

508
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: these places. That's a that's a solid inside and a

509
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: solid burn there. So, beginning in October of eighteen nine seven,

510
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: Journegin and Fisher operated their business in North Lubec, eventually

511
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: leasing multiple locations for plants. So plants in quotes here

512
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: you should hear me say. And they hired over a

513
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: hundred workers. They gathered money from lots of eager investors

514
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: throughout New York, Massachusetts. In Connecticut, apparently they authored a

515
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: prospectus about how they planned to extract money from the

516
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 1: ocean that was somewhat successful in getting investors. And at

517
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: these plants they operated these so called accumulators that supposedly

518
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: worked on the same principal journe again had demonstrated before,

519
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:30,640
Speaker 1: but with different specifications. To quote from Bangs again in

520
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: a January twentie nine article describing them, quote these boxes

521
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: were made in part of copper and containing a battery, mercury,

522
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:42,719
Speaker 1: and unknown chemicals. It is recorded that one of the

523
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: first accumulators that was used for demonstration purposes was lined

524
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: with lead and was not much larger than a plate.

525
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 1: The lead lining proved to be a bad idea, as

526
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: the mercury could easily eat its way through this metal.

527
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 1: Now we alluded to the fact earlier that journe again,

528
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: unlike some of these other people who filed for patents,

529
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: Journegan did not want to share his method. He he

530
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: kept secret whatever his method for getting the gold out

531
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: of the sea water was, and with hindsight the reason

532
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: for that is obvious. Bangs reports that by February there

533
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: were about a hundred of these accumulators operating under the

534
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 1: wharf at the plant location, and more were on the way.

535
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,959
Speaker 1: Exactly how often these accumulators were checked for gold, and

536
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: how the gold got into them when it was found,

537
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: or or where the gold came from in general, is

538
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: still a matter of some dispute, but a number of

539
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: sources from the Times say that for a lot of

540
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: these demonstrations there was a sleight of hand involving pre

541
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: purchased gold, either above water or below, and especially with

542
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 1: like the earlier demonstrations that had taken place beforehand with

543
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: some of the first investors. The idea is that while

544
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: Joern again was up on the dock doing his show,

545
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: lowering the accumulator and and entertaining the possible investors his part,

546
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: Charles Fisher was allegedly a skilled diver in possession of

547
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:08,959
Speaker 1: a diving suit yeah and it has been widely suggested

548
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: that during at least some of these early demonstrations, Fisher

549
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 1: would sneak underwater via a guideline to the side of

550
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: the accumulator in his diving suit and then salt the

551
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: box or boxes with gold or silver. And then later

552
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: once they had actually established these plants and they had

553
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: the accumulators working in the mill pond reservoir. At this point,

554
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: I think it's more murky whether Fisher would actually need

555
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: to go underwater to sault them, or whether you could

556
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 1: just produce the gold, you know, generally at the plant

557
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: later and say it came out of the accumulators. It's

558
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 1: not exactly clear what always was happening there, but they

559
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: did have gold, and it appeared this gold was just

560
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: bought like it was sourced from jewelry and other stuff,

561
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: and and then collected on the factory premises as if

562
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: it had come out of the accumulators. And then the

563
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: production of this gold from the accumulator supposedly was used

564
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: to prove to more investors that they should give even

565
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: more money. Now, apparently the local press was very optimistic

566
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 1: and positive about Journe again and Fisher and the project

567
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 1: as a whole. I found a page hosted by the

568
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: main Memory network that quotes a Lubeck Herold article from saying, quote,

569
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: the presence of these people is not only desirable for

570
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 1: the amount of money that they will bring into the town,

571
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: but we should welcome them for their social qualities. The

572
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 1: officers of the company or earnest Christian gentleman, and many

573
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: of their employees are Christians. We wish them all the

574
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: success in their undertaking, and hope that they will take

575
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: millions of dollars from the old pass him a quote bay,

576
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 1: and we believe they will. With quantities of gold in

577
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: the salt water, there is little need of a trip

578
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 1: to Alaska. So again the idea of like Klondike sort

579
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: of being in the back of everybody's mind. And and

580
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: I wonder in what way that may actually make a

581
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: hoax or or a scam like this more appealing if

582
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: there's like if it's appealing to something that you could

583
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: get in another way, but it would be much harder. Again,

584
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: it comes back to too good to be true. It's

585
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: the shortcut. It's there they're selling. They're selling the shortcut here,

586
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 1: which of course doesn't pan out. Yeah, so there is

587
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: a question of why did Jurnagan choose Lubeck for the

588
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: side of the plants or Journagin and Fisher together, I

589
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 1: guess well. Jurnagan claimed that it had to do with

590
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 1: things like that extremely high title range, that we were

591
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: talking about earlier in the episode, but I've also read

592
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: speculated that he was basically just trying to get out

593
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: of range of easy investigation by his investors and stakeholders,

594
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 1: who were mostly further south in New England. And it's

595
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: worth noting that, unlike several other inventors of the eighteen nineties,

596
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: again Jurnagin did not patent his process. He did not

597
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: take out a patent on whatever he was doing to

598
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: supposedly extract gold from the ocean. Instead, he kept it

599
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 1: entirely secret, and again it's now obvious why so. The

600
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: scam went on for a while, but eventually in the

601
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen so the year following, when they arrived

602
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: in Lubeck, after they had gathered by some estimates, around

603
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: a million dollars in total from investors, but just before

604
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:14,959
Speaker 1: the scheme was fully exposed and they were caught, Journ

605
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: again and Fisher skip town, taking their investors money with them.

606
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: And even worse than that, there were hundreds of workers

607
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: who had been attracted to Lubeck to work for the

608
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: company who were suddenly just left out of work. Apparently,

609
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:30,399
Speaker 1: Journ again fled to Europe with his family claiming that

610
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 1: he himself had been duped by Fisher. That seems kind

611
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 1: of unlikely. Uh, Fisher just disappeared entirely, and Journagin eventually

612
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: returned some of the money that he stole. He returned

613
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: some of it to to his investors. Reportedly, they made

614
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: about thirty six cents on the dollar back from their investment,

615
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: and Journegan went on to become a school teacher in

616
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: the Philippines. But I'm still thinking about the question I

617
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: opened with that you brought up just a second ago.

618
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: You know, It's it's one thing when someone is selling

619
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 1: you on a recognizable absurd to d like a pyramid

620
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: scheme or magic beings or whatever. But in a way,

621
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:10,760
Speaker 1: developing scientific frontiers can make a magic being type swindle

622
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:16,239
Speaker 1: seem more possible because they emphasize the unarguable fact that

623
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 1: we don't always really know what's possible. You know, it

624
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 1: wasn't just that a bunch of gullible investors from New

625
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: York and New England got taken in by a free

626
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 1: money scam. Remember that I mentioned earlier from the Stubs paper.

627
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: The Nobel Prize winning chemists Sir William Ramsey was at

628
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:34,320
Speaker 1: least for a time inclined to believe that a gold

629
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 1: from the sea experiment at Hailing Island in southern England

630
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: could be leveraged into a profitable enterprise. Now, of course,

631
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: further testing would prove this wasn't the case. But how

632
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: exactly would people have known that this would never work

633
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: at this point in history, you know, chemistry and mineral extraction.

634
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 1: I feel like that they must have seemed like a

635
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: kind of vast, untapped wilderness of infinite possibility. Yeah, yeah,

636
00:35:58,280 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: and and again I come back to the idea that

637
00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 1: it it feels so much like a technological amplification of

638
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: gold panning. And if gold panning is possible without modern technology,

639
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: then you know, might the same sort of thing be

640
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: possible on a grander scale in the sea given advances

641
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:15,359
Speaker 1: in technology. I mean, I feel like the same sort

642
00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, basic line of thinking you know,

643
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,359
Speaker 1: easily applies to things today or could apply to, uh,

644
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: to technology today. Yeah, if if you don't understand the

645
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: underlying principles, chemistry looks like magic. I mean, just to

646
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: remind you again, like the cyanide extraction process for gold

647
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: that probably would in some sense work, It just wouldn't

648
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,800
Speaker 1: work well enough to to make a profit. But anyway,

649
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 1: maybe we should take another break and then when we

650
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: come back we can talk more about the geology, chemistry,

651
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: and ideology of gold. Thank alright, we're back. So, uh,

652
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on this a little bit on

653
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: the show before, but I was thinking about the idea

654
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,359
Speaker 1: of where gold actually comes from. You know, thinking about

655
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 1: gold existing dissolve throughout the oceans makes you wonder about

656
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 1: questions like this because gold is a relatively rare element

657
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: compared to the commonplaces of you know, hydrogen, oxygen, and

658
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: iron and all that. But obviously veins of it can

659
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: be found in Earth's crust and in the ocean as well.

660
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 1: So where does gold actually come from? Well, the atomic

661
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:21,879
Speaker 1: origin of gold, like what makes the gold atoms. There's

662
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 1: still some uncertainty here, but the evidence indicates that gold

663
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: is produced an extremely violent stellar phenomena. Possibly it was,

664
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: it used to be thought through something known as the

665
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,360
Speaker 1: r process of a supernova, you know, this rapid neutron capture.

666
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: More recently, I've seen uh studies suggesting it's probably more

667
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,479
Speaker 1: likely through the collision of neutron stars. So think about

668
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,840
Speaker 1: that next time you're just looking at a piece of

669
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: gold leaf for gold. Yeah, you're you're drinking the you know,

670
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 1: the gold leaf liquor or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah,

671
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: it didn't. Didn't you ever know people who drank that stuff?

672
00:37:56,520 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: I did. I knew someone who drank it exclusively. Yeah, wow, exclusively.

673
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: That's I mean the I'm not saying they drank it

674
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:07,839
Speaker 1: only like it was their only liquid, but I think

675
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 1: it was like the only there was there. It was

676
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 1: their go to alcohol, um, which I mean, it's sparkly,

677
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:17,320
Speaker 1: it's going it kind of under. It's a perfect example

678
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 1: of gold fascination. Like, like so much of our fascination

679
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: with gold is based on the fact that it it

680
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: looks neat, even if it doesn't actually contribute to the um,

681
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: you know, effectiveness of a tool or a weapon, etcetera.

682
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 1: It's really only when you get into, you know, more

683
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: into the modern technological world where you find gold is

684
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 1: having a lot more function as opposed to just pure

685
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: you know, shiny lure. Right right, Uh, well, you know

686
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: what now that I'm sort of questioning because I was

687
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: about to say, you know, like gold is so amazing

688
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: because it comes from the collision of neutron stars probably

689
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:55,320
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. It comes from very violent stellar

690
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,360
Speaker 1: phenomena that are at levels of magnitude and power that

691
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 1: you can't even comprehend. But on the other hand, I mean,

692
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:03,479
Speaker 1: tons of elements are like that, and in fact, the

693
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: the actual atomic origin of all elements is mind boggling

694
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 1: when you think about it. It's just that, like, this

695
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: is mind boggling in this particular way. But gold is

696
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: metal that looks like the Sun, and therefore it gets

697
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 1: it gets a privileged status, I guess so. But then

698
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: there's another question actually beyond that. So okay that obviously,

699
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: you know, many heavy elements that are dispersed throughout the

700
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: galaxy are created by violent stellar phenomenon supernovae or or

701
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: the collision of neutron stars things like that. But then

702
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: how does it get to Earth? So this is really

703
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,239
Speaker 1: interesting there. And there again this is another area where

704
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: we don't have all the answers, and they're you know,

705
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 1: some competing hypothesis uh to consider here. But the late

706
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 1: Veneer hypothesis argues that gold and other specific materials were

707
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: added to the Earth's crust roughly three point eight billion

708
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: years ago via a bombardment of iridium rich meteorites known

709
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: as chondrites. So this is the idea merged in the

710
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies following analysis of lunar rocks and the

711
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 1: lack of gold and iridium in uh the lunar mantle.

712
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: They found they found it on a lunar surface. However,

713
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:14,720
Speaker 1: and we have we have to remember that the surface

714
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 1: of the Moon is ancient lunar highland rocks returned by

715
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 1: Apollo sixteen or roughly four billion years old. A rock

716
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: from Apollo seventeen was found to be four point five

717
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: billion years old. To put all of that in perspective,

718
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,799
Speaker 1: the Solar system itself is thought to be roughly uh

719
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:36,399
Speaker 1: four point uh five sixty eight billion years old, So

720
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 1: some of these lunar rocks are as old as our

721
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: solar system itself basically. And you can also look at

722
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: the cratering. More craters mean geologically older surfaces. Fewer craters

723
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: as with Earth indicates a geologically younger surface, right, because

724
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: the Earth is geologically active, so it's constantly repaving its

725
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 1: own surface in a way that the Moon is not. Correct. Yeah,

726
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:02,840
Speaker 1: So the hypothesis here is that this golden bombardment um

727
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:06,919
Speaker 1: was churned up and incorporated into the Earth's mantle, while

728
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: it only impacted the surface layer of the Moon. Interesting.

729
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: So in a sense, if you follow that hypothesis, you

730
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:16,800
Speaker 1: could say, okay, well that means gold is kind of alien.

731
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: You know, it's from another world. It's it's it's extraterrestrial. Um.

732
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: But but then we have some some other ideas out

733
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: there as well. For instance, there's the rival magma ocean hypothesis,

734
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: which argues that the gold was here all along. And

735
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,040
Speaker 1: here's how William Kramer explained it in the BBC News

736
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:39,439
Speaker 1: article does gold come from outer space? From quote all

737
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: the gold and Earth's crust or the overwhelming majority of

738
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: it was here on Earth all along? Most of it

739
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:48,600
Speaker 1: certainly alloyed with iron and migrated to the Earth's core,

740
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: but a significant proportion, perhaps point two, dissolved into a

741
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: seven hundred kilometer deep magma ocean within the Earth's outer mantle.

742
00:41:57,239 --> 00:41:59,360
Speaker 1: Later the gold was brought back up to the crust

743
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 1: by volcanic action. This is the stuff we wear around

744
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: our necks and on our fingers today. WHOA Okay, So

745
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: it's either so if one of these hypotheses is correct,

746
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: it's either from a bombardment from space or an eruption

747
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 1: of volcanoes basically, But then again, it's it's kind of

748
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: like everything is due to violence in space, right if

749
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: you go back far enough in terms of the history

750
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: of our planet, etcetera. So you know, it's it's ultimately

751
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:30,520
Speaker 1: we're dealing with with processes and events on a scale

752
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 1: so far beyond the you know, the limits of a

753
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 1: human lifetime and human experience that it's all, uh, it's

754
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:39,839
Speaker 1: all the machinations of the gods. Right, there are no

755
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 1: bundane atoms. All atoms are beautiful, yeah, but they're not

756
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: all equally valuable. So people did continue the search for

757
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:50,720
Speaker 1: gold in the ocean after the examples we've already talked about.

758
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: One of the questions I was wondering about, is, okay,

759
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: have have modern methods changed our picture at all of

760
00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 1: whether there is really gold in the ocean like worse

761
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:03,400
Speaker 1: On stat and the other nineteenth century chemists correct, is

762
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: the really gold dissolved in the ocean? And the answer

763
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 1: is yes, But modern methods revealed that there's probably even

764
00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: less of it than previously estimated. According to some materials

765
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: I was reading by the n O a A, there

766
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: there is gold in sea water, but it's actually difficult

767
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: to measure exactly how much, and it does seem to

768
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:24,839
Speaker 1: vary in different parts of the ocean. But but they

769
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,560
Speaker 1: linked to one study using modern methods that was published

770
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety by K. Kennison, Faulkner and J. M.

771
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: Edmond called Golden Seawater in the journal Earth and Planetary

772
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:41,720
Speaker 1: Science Letters, and these authors found quote, the measured concentrations

773
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 1: of gold in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are within

774
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 1: a factor of two to three of recently reported values

775
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: in Pacific waters and nearly three orders of magnitude less

776
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 1: than reported in the literature prior to nineteen eight, indicating

777
00:43:56,800 --> 00:44:01,399
Speaker 1: contamination problems with the earlier data. And apparently, uh there

778
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 1: are places that have more gold in the water than

779
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 1: other places. They point out Mediterranean deep waters apparently have

780
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: higher concentrations, as do fluids surrounding hydrothermal vents, which is interesting.

781
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: But the n O a. A. Summarizes the findings of

782
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:18,920
Speaker 1: this paper to say that there is quote only about

783
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,880
Speaker 1: one gram of gold for every one hundred million metric

784
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 1: tons of ocean water in the Atlantic and North Pacific,

785
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of water you'd have to turn

786
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: through to get a gram of gold. Yeah, you need

787
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: to take a lot of patients, right, and a lot

788
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,360
Speaker 1: of energy. I mean, ultimately your power bill would be

789
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: way more than you could sell the gold. For just

790
00:44:41,280 --> 00:44:45,280
Speaker 1: one more historical instance, I came across of of people

791
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:47,719
Speaker 1: trying to turn gold or claiming that they would be

792
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: able to to turn the ocean into gold. There was

793
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: an article in The New York Times in um on

794
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: March twenty seven, nineteen thirty four, by William L. Lawrence

795
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:02,320
Speaker 1: called Tapping Ocean's gold treasure predicted as coming in decade,

796
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: which I think is a particularly awful title. I don't

797
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: know how he could have phrased something that bad. That's

798
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: it's like four layers of passive voice or something. Um.

799
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: But so here's a brief sketch of the article. What

800
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: was then the Ethel Dow Chemical Company, which was a

801
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:23,760
Speaker 1: joint venture of the Ethel Company in the Dow Chemical Company.

802
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:28,279
Speaker 1: They successfully deployed a plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, which

803
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: was able to extract bro mean from seawater, and based

804
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 1: on the principles that were in operation at this plant,

805
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: a couple of prominent chemists predicted at the nineteen thirty

806
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: four Annual convention of the American Chemical Society that within

807
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: the next ten years they would be able to extract quote,

808
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 1: the three quadrillion dollar treasure in pure gold known to

809
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: exist in very dilute form in the waters of the

810
00:45:53,160 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 1: Seven Seas, very quadrillion dollar treasure that I can you

811
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:08,439
Speaker 1: imagine that as like an actual official business plan where

812
00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: they're like and and then we know over the next

813
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 1: you know, a few years, we're gonna make three quadrillion dollars.

814
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 1: Our valuation of our company is elevenies zillion dollars. Oh

815
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 1: that's great, but interesting historical coincidence here. Who were the

816
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:28,439
Speaker 1: chemists who made this prediction. Well, so two of them

817
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: were dal Chemical guys, Willard H. Dow and Leroy C. Stewart,

818
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: but both of dal Chemical. But the other one who

819
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: made this prediction at this meeting in was none other

820
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: than Thomas Midgeley, who was at the time VP of

821
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 1: the Ethel Corporation and who was a brilliant chemists, no doubt,

822
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 1: but who is now probably more famous for developing two

823
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: major technologies, leaded gasoline and chlora flora carbon's. That's both

824
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: quite a quite a resume. Uh so, Yeah, Actually, the

825
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 1: name of the company Midgeley was president of at the

826
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 1: time that the Ethel Company was the brand name for

827
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: tetra Ethel lead gasoline, which midgually developed as an anti

828
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: knocking agent. So the idea was that the additive, the

829
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: the added lead content, would make the gasoline burn more evenly. Unfortunately,

830
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: the burning of leaded gasoline just blankets the environment and lead,

831
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,359
Speaker 1: which which is just a bad thing to do in

832
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,840
Speaker 1: every imaginable way. Then, on top of that, he also

833
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: developed free on, which probably would have seemed more harmless

834
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,879
Speaker 1: at the time. This was the first of the commercial CFCs,

835
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: and this was in the search for a non toxic refrigerant.

836
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: Of course, free on was very successful until the CFC

837
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 1: started to get into the upper atmosphere, and then they

838
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 1: began to eat away at the planets ozone layer. So

839
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: I was reading the words of an environmental historian named J. R.

840
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: McNeil in a two thousand and one book where he writes,

841
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: quote Midgely, the same research chemists who figured out that

842
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: lead would enhance engine performance had more impact on the

843
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: atmosphere than any single other organism in Earth history. So yeah,

844
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:12,440
Speaker 1: so he's one of the guys saying three quadrillion dollars

845
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. But anyway, so these guys the the

846
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society meeting in thirty four, we're arguing, Look,

847
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be impossible to profitably extract

848
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:27,359
Speaker 1: bromine from seawater, but now we've climbed that hill. So

849
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: other substances like gold and silver and radium, they're just

850
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:33,720
Speaker 1: next in line. We just need to refine our methods.

851
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 1: But of course it never happened. But this makes sense, right.

852
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 1: It's like, as technology continues to advance, we kind of

853
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: keep making the same mistakes, right, We keep coming back

854
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: to far fetched ideas from the past and asking yourselves, well,

855
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: is it time? Is it now? Yeah? I guess so.

856
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: I mean, others keep bringing this idea up basically every decade.

857
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:56,400
Speaker 1: It seems like I never saw this personally, but I

858
00:48:56,440 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: was reading that. Apparently there was a guy on that

859
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: TV show shar arc Tank. I was reading about this

860
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:05,920
Speaker 1: in an Atlas Obscura article about getting gold from seawater

861
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 1: by Eric Grundhauser, and he mentioned so on the show

862
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 1: Shark Tank. There's a guy who proposed a clean energy

863
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:15,720
Speaker 1: device that he just claimed as a byproduct would refine

864
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 1: gold from the ocean. And I do not think he

865
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 1: won the prize money or whatever. But there's another way

866
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,320
Speaker 1: in which people are still, in a practical sense looking

867
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: to the oceans for mineral wealth and precious metals, because

868
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 1: while it might not actually be economically practical to capture

869
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: gold and other precious metals from the seawater itself, the

870
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:41,120
Speaker 1: ocean does contain accessible mineral riches in other ways, Like

871
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: what about the idea of ocean floor mining. Yeah, and

872
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 1: indeed there is a high potential for sea floor mining,

873
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: at least in the future. This is an again another

874
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: area where the technology is not quite there to the

875
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: point where it would be, um, you know, actually profitable

876
00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:00,760
Speaker 1: to go after it. But technology can ttinues to advance,

877
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: as does um you know that the demand for some

878
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: of these substances. But yeah, particularly gold and other metals. Um. However,

879
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: the practice comes with severe risks for deep sea ecosystems

880
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: that were either beginning only beginning to understand, or in

881
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:18,680
Speaker 1: many cases are still shrouded in mystery or just unknown

882
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 1: to us. I have to refer back to we've talked

883
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:23,959
Speaker 1: about the moon in this episode, and we've talked about

884
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: the deep ocean. Uh, as we've pointed out before, you know,

885
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 1: we ultimately know more about the surface details of the

886
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,200
Speaker 1: Moon than we know about the depths of Earth's own ocean.

887
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 1: You know, I specifically remember in our conversation with Diva

888
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 1: aim On here on the show The Marine Biologists Too.

889
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 1: That was a great episode, I thought, But she she

890
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: was warning specifically about the potential dangers of deep sea

891
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:51,720
Speaker 1: mining to underwater ecosystems. Yeah, because a lot of it

892
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,720
Speaker 1: revolves around hydrothermal events, which we already mentioned in passing

893
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,240
Speaker 1: in the episode here. Now, if you've watched your share

894
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 1: of nature documentaries, which I imagine a lot of our

895
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: listeners have, you've likely seen footage, incredible footage of these

896
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: amazing places where chimney shaped black smokers, you know, boil

897
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:13,280
Speaker 1: the sea water and around which entire ecosystems of strange

898
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:17,280
Speaker 1: creatures thrive in the darkness, including the so called hof crab,

899
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: which are you know it actually not crabs. Their their

900
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: deep sea squat lobsters. But they're they're very weird looking.

901
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: The whole environment is weird looking. It's it's it's this

902
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: alien seeming world that has actually helped us better imagine

903
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 1: how life might thrive in a truly alien environment, perhaps

904
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 1: in a dark or hidden ocean somewhere. Yeah, Like if

905
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:38,880
Speaker 1: we were ever to discover that there were life on

906
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 1: say Jupiter's moon Europa. Uh, understanding life around hydrothermal vents

907
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: on Earth might be a good guide to understand what's

908
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: possible on another moon or planetary body like that. Yeah. So,

909
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: so these these sites are are very impressive, and they're

910
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: a great there's a great deal of scientific interest and

911
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: what's going on there. But these vent sites also produce

912
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:05,360
Speaker 1: massive sulfide deposits rich in metals or sea floor massive

913
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 1: sulfide deposits are sms. So here high pressure, superheated fluids

914
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 1: escape through cracks and they mix with the cold sea

915
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: water and when this happens, minerals form and fall to

916
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:22,920
Speaker 1: the sea floor. And these include high concentrations of copper, gold, silver, zinc,

917
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:26,560
Speaker 1: and lead. Now on Earth's surface we have massive sulfide

918
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: deposits due to volcanic action, and these are major sources

919
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: of copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold on the surface. Uh.

920
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: But so these sites would would seem to offer the

921
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: same riches and uh, again, the technology is not quite

922
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: bare to the point where we could actually go after

923
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:45,600
Speaker 1: these resources in a way that would be profitable, like

924
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: completely putting aside any environmental concerns, Like it just hasn't

925
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: crossed that threshold yet, but there's a lot of concern

926
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: that it is about to. And sites in the Pacific

927
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 1: are of our our special interests because they've been proven

928
00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 1: to produce high concentrations of the desired metals, plus their

929
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: shallower than other sites and therefore easier to potentially reach

930
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 1: and harvest, like these are going to be the first

931
00:53:08,600 --> 00:53:13,320
Speaker 1: places that people go after. Also, these sites are generally

932
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 1: under under the domain of Pacific nations, where there may

933
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:19,760
Speaker 1: there might not be sufficient governance or management in place

934
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 1: yet for such endeavors. I mean that on top of

935
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: just the relative newness of the entire prospect of deep

936
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: sea mining. So there are organizations involved in efforts to

937
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 1: protect these areas or in other cases like see that

938
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: any mining efforts there are done in a way that

939
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: doesn't just decimate the environment. You mentioned our interview with

940
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: deep c biologist and ocean advocate Diva amon Uh, and

941
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:47,320
Speaker 1: she specifically pointed out the work of the Deep Sea

942
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: Conservation Coalition, which everyone can learn about at Save the

943
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:55,320
Speaker 1: High Seas dot org. They point out that these minerals

944
00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:58,320
Speaker 1: have thus far proven too difficult to reach, too expensive,

945
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:02,280
Speaker 1: and the technology to do it effectively regardless of environmental

946
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:05,240
Speaker 1: concerns isn't quite there yet. But the concern here again

947
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: is that the technology will get there. Major players are

948
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: already involved with their eyes on the deep seabed mining

949
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 1: riches and quote it's only very recently, as technological advancement

950
00:54:16,200 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 1: has been matched by escalating commodity prices in demand that

951
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: the highly speculative practice has begun to be considered economically

952
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: viable by some companies. So work needs to be done

953
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 1: now to protect these environments, you know, to make sure

954
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:32,319
Speaker 1: that that there there are laws in place, um, that

955
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: there's some sort of governance there and it's not just

956
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 1: a free for all um. Again, I highly recommend visiting

957
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: Save the High Seas dot org to learn more and

958
00:54:39,680 --> 00:54:42,640
Speaker 1: also consider checking out our chat with Diva Amon from

959
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 1: last year. Yeah. Absolutely, that was a good one. And

960
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,640
Speaker 1: I actually have one more uh thing that that came

961
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:50,879
Speaker 1: up in the research I'd like to to to bring

962
00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: out here. Briefly. We've we've spoken about all these different

963
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 1: ways of like trying to coax the gold out of

964
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 1: its hiding place, right, how to trick it out of

965
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: the ocean or out of the the deep sea floor,

966
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 1: et cetera, or even out of the streams and the mountains.

967
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: So there's a There's an additional idea that they came

968
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: across here called phyto mining, and basically the premise here

969
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: is that some plants have the ability to absorb minerals

970
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: through their roots and concentrate metals such as nickel, uh cadmium,

971
00:55:22,520 --> 00:55:27,040
Speaker 1: and zinc. These plants are hyper accumulators. Uh. Now, there

972
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 1: are no gold hyper accumulators because gold doesn't dissolve in

973
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:35,280
Speaker 1: water all that easily, but it can seemingly be forced

974
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: to do so. So there's this technique that was proposed

975
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:42,560
Speaker 1: by Chris Anderson, environmental geochemist at Massi University in New Zealand,

976
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: and his idea was to plant fast growing leafy plants

977
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 1: like mustard plants on soil containing gold, such as soil

978
00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: found near gold mines, that sort of thing. When the

979
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 1: plants reach their full height, you treat the soil to

980
00:55:57,080 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 1: make the gold more soluble. Then the plant will abser

981
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 1: orb the gold up into its biomass, and then you

982
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: harvest it. Huh. Interesting. Now, the harvesting apparently is more

983
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 1: difficult than it sounds, because you can't just burn the

984
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: plant and then like get picked the gold out of

985
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: the ash, because gold is gonna gonna escape in the

986
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,759
Speaker 1: smoke via the ash, So that instead you'd have to

987
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: use a chemical process involving like strong acids. And the

988
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:27,040
Speaker 1: problem is that these might be too environmentally risky in

989
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: and of themselves. Uh. Anderson's idea is that perhaps you

990
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:34,400
Speaker 1: could use this alongside the just the basic absorption of

991
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 1: soul contaminants, so you would be planting u these plants

992
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:40,760
Speaker 1: manipulating the soil in a way so that they're removing

993
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:44,479
Speaker 1: soil containments and as a byproduct, removing gold as well.

994
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,279
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I don't think I've ever even heard of

995
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 1: this possibility. This is this is brand new to me. Yeah,

996
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't look like there's been a ton

997
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: of work on it, but there has. There are some

998
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:58,400
Speaker 1: other um papers about it out there, and some of

999
00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:01,000
Speaker 1: them are I was looking at another one as well

1000
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 1: that seemed to frame it as a more like environmentally

1001
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:09,480
Speaker 1: stable solution. But um, but but I don't know the

1002
00:57:09,520 --> 00:57:11,799
Speaker 1: other source I was looking at was saying that, you know,

1003
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: you have to consider these acids that are used to

1004
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:17,680
Speaker 1: treat the soil. So uh So, I don't know what

1005
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I guess is it it's it's perfect for

1006
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 1: someone to scam people right now, right. Yes, So if

1007
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 1: you want to become the next Reverend Prescott forward Journe again,

1008
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 1: you just need to come up with a good story

1009
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: about a vision of plants that you had while asleep

1010
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: in a train car. And then you find a suitable

1011
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: small town and you say, I'm going to make mustard

1012
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: greens into gold. Yeah, I can see it now. I

1013
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: think it would make for a great um. I don't know,

1014
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 1: it could be a great plot element in the story

1015
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, there's a there's actually there's a Live

1016
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: Science article about this title. There's Gold and then Our

1017
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 1: Plants by a Lindsay Kunkle And this was from well,

1018
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: I'm immediately thinking of Pipper. Oh yeah, yeah, from Final Sacrifice. Yes,

1019
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:12,520
Speaker 1: the Final Sacrifice famously um riffed on Mystery Science Theater

1020
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 1: three thousand. So anyway, I don't know about gold from plants,

1021
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 1: or certainly I don't know about about finding the Lost

1022
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: City of Zeos. Uh. Here uh in Canada. But but

1023
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:29,920
Speaker 1: certainly I think we have explored the possibility of finding

1024
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: hidden gold in the ocean. Um technically yes, but with

1025
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 1: some with some definite asterisk is technically yes, practically no.

1026
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 1: If somebody comes to you with a with a get

1027
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:49,040
Speaker 1: rich quick scheme about it, you should uh, you should

1028
00:58:49,040 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 1: have a chemist friend look into it first. Exactly all right, Uh, well,

1029
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: we'll go in close the episode out right there, But

1030
00:58:56,760 --> 00:58:59,280
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone about this topic. Uh.

1031
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:01,560
Speaker 1: Certainly if you have any connection to some of the

1032
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:04,240
Speaker 1: parts of the world that we discussed here, and if

1033
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:06,880
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, you can find us

1034
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:09,360
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.

1035
00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:12,480
Speaker 1: Just makes your rate, review and subscribe huge, Thanks as

1036
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1037
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1038
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic

1039
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:22,880
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

1040
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

1041
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:35,960
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

1042
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:38,600
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,

1043
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're

1044
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:46,520
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. Bl bl bl bl bl

1045
00:59:46,560 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: bl blah bla bladio no f