Speaker 1: On a train coming from Washington. The worthy Minister had
Speaker 1: reposed himself in his birth when in a burst of light,
Speaker 1: the Lord appeared to him and gave into his keeping
Speaker 1: the secret of how gold could be taken from the sea.
Speaker 1: Mr Joern, again having the mystery direct from heaven, was
Speaker 1: not one to flaunt it in the faces of the
Speaker 1: uninspired scientists, but kept it locked in his own heart,
Speaker 1: as all such revelations should be welcome to stot to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey are
Speaker 1: you welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind? My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and time Joe McCormick. And that opening
Speaker 1: reading was from the Hartford Current, from an article from
Speaker 1: January seventeenth, ninety six called Dredging Gold from Seawater. And
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this episode. We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about a great, a fantastic historical gold swindle. But before
Speaker 1: we get into the historical details, I've got a question
Speaker 1: that I want to think about. This might frame our
Speaker 1: consideration of this historical episode. Uh. You know how sometimes
Speaker 1: you see people passing around an article online about some
Speaker 1: apparently miraculous new technology that really sounds too good to
Speaker 1: be true. For example, the one that easily comes to
Speaker 1: my mind is the various proposed reactionless drives that would
Speaker 1: somehow supposedly move a spacecraft without any propellant or exhaust,
Speaker 1: apparently in violation of the law of conservation of momentum. Now,
Speaker 1: whenever one of these things makes the rounds, I see
Speaker 1: exasperated skeptics responding with, you know, the standard line, if
Speaker 1: something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, I totally agree with their skepticism about these
Speaker 1: particular technologies, reactionless drives and so forth, But I want
Speaker 1: to ask it like step back and ask a broader question,
Speaker 1: which is, how do you actually know when something is
Speaker 1: too good to be true? If if previously unexplored frontiers
Speaker 1: of science are involved in the case of something like
Speaker 1: a reactionless drive, actual physicists and aerospace engineers and people
Speaker 1: like that are probably in a good position to swap
Speaker 1: the idea down based on years of familiarity with that
Speaker 1: particular problem space and the solutions available within it um.
Speaker 1: And of course you know their their knowledge of the
Speaker 1: general laws of physics and trying to push against those
Speaker 1: laws throughout a career. But if you're just a regular
Speaker 1: person without any particular expertise, and somebody comes to you
Speaker 1: with a claim about some you know, some new technological capability.
Speaker 1: How do you know when it's too good to be true,
Speaker 1: especially when the mechanisms that supposedly make possible lie underneath
Speaker 1: the shroud of sub microscopic chemistry or like invisible fields
Speaker 1: and forces in physics. I mean, the short answer would
Speaker 1: be like why, or the counter question would be why
Speaker 1: are you coming to me with this? You know, if
Speaker 1: of the you know, if you have some sort of
Speaker 1: zero gravity um uh technique or you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: thing happens to be um Like, why why are you
Speaker 1: coming to me about it? Why are you trying to
Speaker 1: sell me a product that has to do with it
Speaker 1: instead of capitalizing on it yourself. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 1: a very good point about noticing when these these types
Speaker 1: of technologies or claims are either being sold to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely a red flag if somebody's like
Speaker 1: trying to get your money or trying to get an investment.
Speaker 1: It's another thing if there if you're just being told
Speaker 1: about them and sort of asked to buy in intellectually.
Speaker 1: But even then there is something that there is an
Speaker 1: important different between somebody who takes a claim directly to
Speaker 1: say the popular press on the internet versus hashing it
Speaker 1: out in in say journals, where experts would be the
Speaker 1: people arguing about it. Yeah, um, I guess a lot
Speaker 1: of times it implies that there is a lack of
Speaker 1: expertise involved, that this is not a like someone who
Speaker 1: is a professional in their field and there they're claiming
Speaker 1: to have solved a professional level problem. Um. I think.
Speaker 1: I think zero gravity, if I remember correctly, is one
Speaker 1: of these that you see where a lot of amateur,
Speaker 1: um individuals, I think they have they have solved it,
Speaker 1: and they end up making like the same mistakes that
Speaker 1: other people have made in the past, or mistake the
Speaker 1: you know, the same phenomena as as zero gravity, and
Speaker 1: they'll then submit it to NASA. I think, sorry, do
Speaker 1: you mean like anti gravity? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a zero G anti gravity type of technology.
Speaker 1: I'm not as familiar with those, but yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: like that would obviously fit right in with the kind
Speaker 1: of thing I'm thinking about. But like, you can understand
Speaker 1: how the average person could be easily confused here when
Speaker 1: thinking about the cutting edge of of technology, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, especially dealing with microscopic or sub microscopic realms,
Speaker 1: because you can make a list of plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of real technology that rely on principles of physics and
Speaker 1: chemistry and biology that are invisible to everyday life, but
Speaker 1: once they were discovered, they unlocked vast and what really
Speaker 1: would be almost magical seeming power and wealth when they
Speaker 1: were first harnessed. You know, you you can think of
Speaker 1: examples like nuclear power, microprocessors, antibiotics, and to a person
Speaker 1: who didn't understand the underlying science and couldn't see why
Speaker 1: it is that these things worked, all of these ideas
Speaker 1: might have sounded too good to be true. And I
Speaker 1: think it's this kind of ambiguity that makes the story
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today especially interesting, because today
Speaker 1: I want to start off by talking about a fascinating
Speaker 1: historical hoax and swindle that took place in New England
Speaker 1: near the turn of the twentieth century. Now, Robert, I know, um,
Speaker 1: you spent part of your life in Eastern Canada, didn't you.
Speaker 1: Did you ever live? Was it in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia?
Speaker 1: It was, well, it was Newfoundland, Oh, Newfoundland. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: said that wrong. No, no, you you said you said
Speaker 1: it the same way that that people who um who
Speaker 1: are not of Newfoundland have never lived there often referred
Speaker 1: to it Newfoundland but not in Newfoundland. Yeah, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I lived there as a child for a few years. Well,
Speaker 1: it's up towards that part of the continent that we're
Speaker 1: going to travel. So if you if you look at
Speaker 1: a map and you try to find the easternmost settlement
Speaker 1: on the United States mainland, what you'll have to do
Speaker 1: is you'll follow the east coast up the edge of
Speaker 1: Maine to a point of the US border with Canada.
Speaker 1: And this part of Maine is just across a body
Speaker 1: of water called the Bay of Fundy, and it's across
Speaker 1: the Bay of Fundy from Nova Scotia. Uh So, the
Speaker 1: easternmost human settlement before you hit Canada is a little
Speaker 1: coastal town called Lubeck that's spelled lub e C. And
Speaker 1: today Lubec has a population of something like twelve hundred
Speaker 1: people or so. It's between twelve hundred and hundred last
Speaker 1: count I saw, and historically it's it's been kind of
Speaker 1: a fishing town. It got much of its livelihood from
Speaker 1: the sea pulling in fish, clams and lobster, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But the ocean around Lubec and the Bay of Funding
Speaker 1: generally is unusual. I was reading from a article by
Speaker 1: Joyce kryshak in Uh in a magazine about Maine called
Speaker 1: Down East, and she's writing about the the the ocean
Speaker 1: in this area. She writes, quote, it's the roiling tide,
Speaker 1: the heartbeat of the ocean which pounds harder here that
Speaker 1: makes Lubec feel at once isolated and enchanted in a
Speaker 1: tangle of islands, channels and ragged bays. The incoming tide
Speaker 1: clashes against a submerged mountain and the outflow of the St.
Speaker 1: Croix River. It's that's spelled like c r O I X.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's croy or crawl locally, But
Speaker 1: she goes on creating chaotic currents, fevered swells, and unusual
Speaker 1: phenomena like whirlpools and water spouts. Uh. And so part
Speaker 1: of what makes the sea around the back so unusual
Speaker 1: is that the whole Bay of Fundy has an enormous
Speaker 1: tidal range. Now, the Bay of Fundy is again this
Speaker 1: large body of water between mainland New Brunswick and Nova Scotia,
Speaker 1: and it has some of the greatest title variation of
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. There places deeper towards the head
Speaker 1: of the bay where the difference between high tide and
Speaker 1: low tide is close to sixteen meters or more than
Speaker 1: fifty feet, which is just unbelievable, and especially if you
Speaker 1: look up pictures of this, it's astonishing to see, like
Speaker 1: when the sea retreats, how much land is revealed. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I was wondering what causes this huge tidle variation, and
Speaker 1: I was reading about it in a short article by
Speaker 1: a project called Exploring Our Fluid Earth, which is hosted
Speaker 1: by the University of Hawaii website, and they give a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons for this huge tidal range. The first
Speaker 1: is geography, so they say that the bay, you know,
Speaker 1: they point out that the bay is sort of V shaped,
Speaker 1: with the wide part of the mouth and the narrow
Speaker 1: part of the head, and this means as the tide
Speaker 1: flows into the bay from the mouth toward the head,
Speaker 1: it gets more and more compressed as it goes. So
Speaker 1: try to imagine a wave of water flowing into a
Speaker 1: trough that gets narrower and narrower along its length, where
Speaker 1: would the compressed water go well as to go vertical
Speaker 1: as to go up. But the second reason for the
Speaker 1: title range is that because of the shape of the bay,
Speaker 1: that the water in the bay forms a standing wave.
Speaker 1: And the short version of the way this works is
Speaker 1: that there are there are two different frequencies controlling the
Speaker 1: waves in the bay. One is the bay's natural resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: which is the period across which the water tends to
Speaker 1: slash back and forth within the bay itself, and then
Speaker 1: the other is the broader tidal frequency, which is the
Speaker 1: period across which the ocean at large retreats and advances
Speaker 1: uh against the shore and then the bay of funding.
Speaker 1: These periods are almost exactly the same length, about twelve
Speaker 1: and a half hours, so they pile on one another
Speaker 1: to make these massive differences between high and low tide. Again,
Speaker 1: maybe around six meters or twenty ft near the mouth
Speaker 1: of the bay and up to around sixteen meters or
Speaker 1: more than fifty feet near the head. All of this
Speaker 1: to say, I think it's the kind of place where
Speaker 1: if you were a visitor there, you might imagine that
Speaker 1: someone could work miracles from the sea. There's there's a
Speaker 1: strong kind of deep ones energy. Yeah, we're talking it
Speaker 1: just really violent seas at times. And uh and and
Speaker 1: certainly yeah, you look at these pictures of the tide
Speaker 1: differential and it's it's staggering. It looks almost if you
Speaker 1: didn't know what you're looking at, you would think it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something apocalyptic has occurred here. Yeah. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: They're like great photos of say a marina with docks
Speaker 1: and boats, and then that that at high tide the
Speaker 1: boats will be afloat. But then when the c retreats,
Speaker 1: all the boats are just sort of sitting in the sediment.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so to the town of Lubeck, into this
Speaker 1: strange land of lobsters and other worldly tides. In the
Speaker 1: year of eighteen ninety seven there came a couple of
Speaker 1: business partners with a really interesting geological scam for the ages.
Speaker 1: Their claim was they were going to turn the ocean
Speaker 1: into gold. Now I want to mention a book here
Speaker 1: because this was one of my major sources. It's a
Speaker 1: book edited by a scholar named Ronald Pescha, called The
Speaker 1: Great Gold Swindle of Lubeck, Maine from Arcadia Publishing. Most
Speaker 1: of the text of this book is actually a series
Speaker 1: of articles written by a journalist or a local writer
Speaker 1: from Lubeck named Kerry C. Bangs for the Lubeck Herald
Speaker 1: between nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty one, and then
Speaker 1: these articles were edited and supplemented by Ronald pescha Um. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as this book makes clear, a lot of the history
Speaker 1: here is laced through with conflicting accounts from different sources.
Speaker 1: A lot of the original local reporting from the Lubec
Speaker 1: Herald in the eighteen nineties is lost, and so it's
Speaker 1: only known through Bangs secondary retelling in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: So this is a story where not all of the
Speaker 1: details are are solidly established and agreed upon. But we'll
Speaker 1: do our best, I think to to keep to the
Speaker 1: likeliest broad strokes. So these two guys who arrived in
Speaker 1: Lubec in eight They were Charles Fisher, who was a
Speaker 1: native of Martha's Vineyard who had previously been a floor
Speaker 1: walker in a Brooklyn department store. And the other was
Speaker 1: Reverend Prescott Ford Journe, again also originally from Martha's Vineyard,
Speaker 1: but he became a Baptist minister. He was educated at
Speaker 1: Brown University and he had preached at churches from New
Speaker 1: England to Florida, and he was reportedly given to somewhat
Speaker 1: utopian thinking, especially after reading Edward Bellamy's influential utopian novel
Speaker 1: Looking Backward, Robert for you, I've included a picture of
Speaker 1: Journey in here. I was trying to think for a
Speaker 1: while what he looks like, and I realized, to me,
Speaker 1: he looks like the brother in Napoleon Dynamite. Do you
Speaker 1: remember Kip? Oh, yeah, I do. I have to to say,
Speaker 1: when I looked at him, my guy kind of a
Speaker 1: William Sanderson vibe, you know, Oh yeah, I can see that,
Speaker 1: or at least he looks like that would be my
Speaker 1: first casting choice. If I could pick, you know, any
Speaker 1: actor from any any era and sort of they can
Speaker 1: choose what age they they are in the casting, I'd
Speaker 1: probably go with William Sanderson. So he got a little
Speaker 1: bit of a JF. Sebastian kind of thing going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from Blade Runner, probably his most famous role, but he
Speaker 1: he's been a ton of things. He was in Deadwood,
Speaker 1: he was in True Blood, but older listeners may also
Speaker 1: remember him from New Heart, the old sitcom which he
Speaker 1: was one of the trio Larry Darrell and Darrell right, Yes,
Speaker 1: flanked by his brother Darrell and his other brothers Darrell. Yes.
Speaker 1: So these two newcomers to Luke back Journe again and Fisher.
Speaker 1: They least an old gristmill in North Lubec that, in
Speaker 1: its days of grinding grain had been powered by the tide.
Speaker 1: And I got into this. I didn't really know anything
Speaker 1: about it beforehand, but tidal mills themselves are pretty interesting subject.
Speaker 1: They essentially work on the principle of water wheel, except
Speaker 1: instead of using natural continuous water flow like in a
Speaker 1: river or creek to power the wheel, they accumulate water
Speaker 1: into a controlled pond or reservoir during high tide and
Speaker 1: then release that water through a gate to drive the wheel.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But so
Speaker 1: so this mill in North Lubec used to be used
Speaker 1: to grind grain, and they took it over and it
Speaker 1: would become the first plant of what Journagin and Fisher
Speaker 1: would call the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company. Uh. Now, the
Speaker 1: purchase of this property in Lubec was not the beginning
Speaker 1: of the scam. Jernagin and Fisher had already scammed some
Speaker 1: investors by staging Demons stations for a number of potential
Speaker 1: investors further south in New England, and the basic scenario
Speaker 1: for these demonstrations went like this. The Reverend Journegan would
Speaker 1: invite the investors to gather on a dock or a
Speaker 1: seaside shed to watch as he prepared this device that
Speaker 1: he was calling the accumulator, and it was some kind
Speaker 1: of box into which mercury and sometimes other chemicals were inserted.
Speaker 1: I've read it described in some places as lead lined,
Speaker 1: in other places as zinc lined, but apparently you had
Speaker 1: to put mercury into it. And in order to to
Speaker 1: assure his investors, he allowed them to supply their own chemicals.
Speaker 1: So it's like a bring your own mercury party. So
Speaker 1: they show up with the quicksilver, put it into the box,
Speaker 1: and then he would apparently apply an electrical current to
Speaker 1: the box via a battery and then lower it down
Speaker 1: into the sea, where at least what he claimed was
Speaker 1: that the seawater could sluice in and that something about
Speaker 1: the way this box worked would accumulate old content from
Speaker 1: the sea water itself. It would be extracted by the mercury,
Speaker 1: and then I believe the idea was that it would
Speaker 1: form an amalgam with the mercury, and then the box
Speaker 1: would be retrieved some hours later, maybe in the morning
Speaker 1: or something, and voila, there was actually gold inside. And
Speaker 1: so some of these early investors they were astonished and
Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, I'm convinced. Take my money, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to stake in your company now. Before we
Speaker 1: pursued the hoax any further and talk about how it worked,
Speaker 1: I think it would be worth asking the question where
Speaker 1: on Earth did the underlying scientific premise here come from?
Speaker 1: Where where did he get this idea of extracting gold
Speaker 1: from sea water? Well, it turns out that this actually
Speaker 1: wasn't without scientific precedent, and maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then when we come back we can
Speaker 1: talk about the idea of of gold and solution throughout
Speaker 1: the oceans. Thank alright, we're back. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: claim that one can simply turned to seawater, collected, accumulated,
Speaker 1: and produced gold. Right now, we're focused in this episode
Speaker 1: on on a hoax and swindle in in New England history,
Speaker 1: but there is actually some scientific basis to the idea
Speaker 1: that gold could be extracted from seawater and for a
Speaker 1: quick history of the awareness of this fact, the idea
Speaker 1: that gold and other precious metals could at least potentially
Speaker 1: be extracted from the ocean. I found a good overview
Speaker 1: in a paper by a historian named Brett JA. Stubbs,
Speaker 1: published in the journal Australasian Historical Archaeology in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: and the paper is called Delightfully Sunbeams from Cucumbers an
Speaker 1: early twentieth century gold from seawater extraction scheme in northern
Speaker 1: New South Wales. So Stubbs is primarily covering a different
Speaker 1: gold from the ocean plot that took place in Australia
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, but it's introductory section has
Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff here, and the title actually
Speaker 1: comes that the sunbeams from cucumbers comes from a passage
Speaker 1: in the paper where Stubbs mentioned the there was a
Speaker 1: judge named Justice Darling. I think he's referring to Baron
Speaker 1: Charles Darling of England, who at one point compare the
Speaker 1: quest to extract gold from seawater to a scheme and
Speaker 1: Guiliver's Travels, where a character spends eight years developing a
Speaker 1: process to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Now I can only
Speaker 1: assume that the part of the idea with getting gold
Speaker 1: out of saltwater probably stems from the reality of panning
Speaker 1: gold from mountain streams. Um. Again getting into the idea
Speaker 1: that perhaps if if you're not super aware of how
Speaker 1: that process is working, you might well extrapol a well,
Speaker 1: if there's you can get gold out of a stream,
Speaker 1: then look how much ocean there is, there's got to
Speaker 1: be even more gold in there. Um. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: hold up when you really look at how panning for
Speaker 1: gold works. And um, and I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of movies and TV, you know, you'll
Speaker 1: have panning for Gold and it's not really you don't
Speaker 1: really get a good sense of what's going on. H
Speaker 1: But I did find that the Cohen Brothers in the
Speaker 1: film The Ballot of Buster Scrugs, the sequence about the
Speaker 1: goal about the prospector titled All Gold Canyon, was actually
Speaker 1: pretty informative. You know. It does a nice overview of
Speaker 1: just how it basically works. You've seen this, right, Joe
Speaker 1: Is where Tom Waits plays the prospector. I have to
Speaker 1: admit I actually haven't finished the movie yet. I started
Speaker 1: watching it one day, and I loved it. But it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those happens all too often now in
Speaker 1: my life where I start a movie that I like
Speaker 1: and I don't finish it, not for any reason of disinterest. Well,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to press on, certainly for this this
Speaker 1: this particular segment. Uh, it's an anthology film for anyone
Speaker 1: who's not familiar with that takes place in the Old West.
Speaker 1: So in this one, we meet a gold prospector and
Speaker 1: he's out there panning for gold and uh and basically, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna spoil any of the plot,
Speaker 1: but it does a pretty good job of showing you
Speaker 1: that the planning is generally not a lucrative enterprise in
Speaker 1: and of itself, but it's a way to search for
Speaker 1: gold deposits in nearby rock that that can be mined.
Speaker 1: So you find some some gold us showing up in
Speaker 1: this mountain stream, well then you can use that to
Speaker 1: try and figure out where in this mountainous area you
Speaker 1: might find a proper vein of gold that you can
Speaker 1: then dig for. But you know, that's one thing, But
Speaker 1: what would the oceanic version of this b right, I mean,
Speaker 1: the fluid dynamics of the situation are far more complicated.
Speaker 1: The sea itself is far vaster. Um. It's you know,
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the facts involved, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: far from a one to one here, right, And so
Speaker 1: the idea of extracting gold from seawater is actually based
Speaker 1: in more of like the misconception version of of panning
Speaker 1: for gold, where you're not looking for a vein of
Speaker 1: gold to exploit, but you are trying to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the fact that there is actually gold in the
Speaker 1: water itself. It's dissolved in there. There's these little tiny
Speaker 1: molecules of gold throughout the oceans. Um. So, going back
Speaker 1: to Brett JA. Stubbs paper, beginning in the second half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, there were a number of can
Speaker 1: mists and geologists that started to speculate about this. They
Speaker 1: started to say, you know what, I think that you
Speaker 1: probably can extract precious metals of all kinds from the sea.
Speaker 1: One early example is in the year eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement
Speaker 1: of Science, the American chemist Henry Wortz suggested that all
Speaker 1: of the water in the world's oceans quote may contain
Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty million times more gold
Speaker 1: than the total present wealth of mankind in this metal.
Speaker 1: And this was, in Stubbs words, despite its presence in
Speaker 1: concentrations that were so small as to be back to words, quote,
Speaker 1: beyond the limits of our present modes of chemical detection,
Speaker 1: so words couldn't find it yet, but just reasoned, based
Speaker 1: on some other principles of geology and chemistry, that there's
Speaker 1: probably a huge amount of precious metal just existing in
Speaker 1: solution throughout the ocean. And Stubbs claims that the first
Speaker 1: attempts to actually measure the concentration of gold and see
Speaker 1: water we're probably carried out by the English chemist Edwards Sanstat,
Speaker 1: who was known for developing techniques in the eighteen sixties
Speaker 1: for the production of purified magnesium. But Stubbs writes, quote
Speaker 1: Sanstat experimented with samples of seawater from the coast of
Speaker 1: the Isle of Man and concluded that they contained gold,
Speaker 1: but in a proportion certainly less than one grain in
Speaker 1: the ton, and a grain here is is a unit
Speaker 1: of measure that is equivalent to about sixty five milligrams,
Speaker 1: so there's not a lot of it in there. Continuing
Speaker 1: with Stubbs, he went as far as to suggest, however,
Speaker 1: that one of his methods might be practically applied to
Speaker 1: the exploitation of the golden seawater, which might be received
Speaker 1: at high water in large tanks and emptied at low water.
Speaker 1: Sanstat emphasized in eighteen ninety two that the amount of
Speaker 1: golden sea water was quote far less than one grain
Speaker 1: per ton. But basically he's proposing that, well, it might
Speaker 1: be possible to have some sort of like passive system
Speaker 1: in place that would gradually extract this low quantity of
Speaker 1: gold from the ocean, right, I mean there's a paradox involved, right,
Speaker 1: So there there were other researchers that soon agreed with Sanstad,
Speaker 1: and they emphasized this paradox. In eighteen ninety four, there
Speaker 1: was a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney
Speaker 1: named Archibald liver Sage who started running experiments and concluded
Speaker 1: that the density of gold and the ocean was somewhere
Speaker 1: between half a grain and one grain per ton of water.
Speaker 1: And remember a grain is about sixty five milligrams. So
Speaker 1: Liversedge noted the irony that while the amount of gold
Speaker 1: contained in the whole of the ocean was just enormous,
Speaker 1: I mean, far more gold than humans have access to now.
Speaker 1: It was so spread out and so dilute that the
Speaker 1: process of capturing it and isolating it would probably cost
Speaker 1: more than the resulting gold was worth. And several other
Speaker 1: researchers in the eighteen nineties and early nineteen hundreds repeated
Speaker 1: these experiments, sometimes finding even lower are concentrations of gold
Speaker 1: than Liver's Edge. But it is clear, at least from
Speaker 1: from this research that there is gold floating in solution
Speaker 1: throughout the oceans, and if there were a cheap and
Speaker 1: efficient way to get it out, you could accessed vast
Speaker 1: amounts of riches. But that's a big if. And Stubbs
Speaker 1: notes that in the eight nineties there were many patents
Speaker 1: for processes to extract gold from seawater. However, he notes
Speaker 1: that he could only find records of two gold from
Speaker 1: seawater extraction schemes that were actually put into practice on
Speaker 1: a commercial scale, and both of them failed. One was
Speaker 1: at Hailing Island in southern England, and the other one
Speaker 1: was the main focus of stubbs paper, at Broken Head
Speaker 1: in New South Wales, Australia. I think they were both
Speaker 1: uh they both began in nineteen o four, and these,
Speaker 1: in contrast to the plot by Journe again and and Fisher,
Speaker 1: these were not hoaxes. They were genuine attempts to extract
Speaker 1: the gold by chemical means, but they were never able
Speaker 1: to turn a profit, though they were seen as very
Speaker 1: attract to endeavors to a lot of educated people. Apparently
Speaker 1: no less a figure than the Nobel Prize winning Scottish
Speaker 1: chemist Sir William Ramsay, who was he was instrumental in
Speaker 1: the discovery and isolation of the noble gases. I think
Speaker 1: that's what he got his Nobel Prize for um. He
Speaker 1: was convinced that the plant on Haling Island, the one
Speaker 1: in southern England, was going to be a success, but
Speaker 1: within less than two years of its founding, the company
Speaker 1: operating it had folded and the scheme in New South
Speaker 1: Wales involved It involved sort of what san Stat was saying,
Speaker 1: the extraction of sea water up to a reservoir where
Speaker 1: it was treated on the way to the reservoir with
Speaker 1: lime and iron ox side, and then it was allowed
Speaker 1: to settle into a sludge while the water was drawn
Speaker 1: off at the top, and then the sludge was to
Speaker 1: be treated with cyanide to extract the gold, and apparently
Speaker 1: the Australian plants ceased operation very soon after it started,
Speaker 1: possibly due to storm damage, but there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: it ever would have been able to turn a profit.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this whole brings me back to that interesting
Speaker 1: comparison by Judge Darling the idea of sunbeams from cucumbers,
Speaker 1: because a similar impracticality is actually involved. Cucumbers actually are
Speaker 1: in a sense made out of sunbeams. Right The sunlight
Speaker 1: feeds energy into the plant, which is used to manufacture
Speaker 1: chemical energy in the form of sugars and other tissues.
Speaker 1: And the same energy that came from the sun is
Speaker 1: actually still locked up inside the flesh of the cucumber,
Speaker 1: but in a different form, and it would take a
Speaker 1: very lossy conversion process to turn that chemical energy back
Speaker 1: into light. And as Stubs recounts that other chemists in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century examined the same problem trying to
Speaker 1: get precious metals, mainly gold, out of sea water, and
Speaker 1: they could never find a way to make the process
Speaker 1: of getting the gold out cost effective. You could get
Speaker 1: the gold out, but the process was so expensive and
Speaker 1: so inefficient that the gold it produced was never enough
Speaker 1: to to cause you to break even. Uh. And to
Speaker 1: quote from Stubbs quote, the Nobel Prize in chemist Fritz Haber,
Speaker 1: who later developed his own method for extracting gold from seawater,
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that the quantities were so small
Speaker 1: and the expense so great that the process could never
Speaker 1: be made profitable. Yeah. Fritz Haber, by the way, gave
Speaker 1: us the haber Bosch process, a method he used in
Speaker 1: industry to synthesize ammonia from nydrogen gas and hydrogen gas.
Speaker 1: He's also sometimes referred to as the father of chemical
Speaker 1: warfare for his work on weaponized chlorine gas. Yeah. Apparently
Speaker 1: a lot of his interest in extracting gold from seawater,
Speaker 1: back before he realized that it couldn't turn a profit,
Speaker 1: was was related to making money to help Germany payback
Speaker 1: its war debt from World War One. So back to
Speaker 1: the Lubeck hoax. So where did Joern again get his
Speaker 1: idea to extract gold from seawater? Remember, some sources alleged
Speaker 1: that the idea came to him in a dream or
Speaker 1: a heavenly vision. I think he claimed that at some point,
Speaker 1: and that's the quote I read at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode from the Hartford Current. But he but others
Speaker 1: alleged that this was not a dream, It did not
Speaker 1: come in a vision that the journey and basically read
Speaker 1: about the research of Edward Sonstadt and then he thought, hey,
Speaker 1: what if I could do that? And it's also worth
Speaker 1: pointing out where this scheme occurs in history. So this
Speaker 1: is going to be in the mid to late eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: which is concurrent with the Klondike gold Rush in Alaska
Speaker 1: and the Yukon territory, So gold fever was in the air.
Speaker 1: But in the words of Carrie Bangs quote, it did
Speaker 1: indeed seem less arduous to get the gold from the
Speaker 1: water than from the Alaskan fields. And as someone later
Speaker 1: pointed out, it was even more easy to pick the
Speaker 1: gold from the pockets of stockholders than from either of
Speaker 1: these places. That's a that's a solid inside and a
Speaker 1: solid burn there. So, beginning in October of eighteen nine seven,
Speaker 1: Journegin and Fisher operated their business in North Lubec, eventually
Speaker 1: leasing multiple locations for plants. So plants in quotes here
Speaker 1: you should hear me say. And they hired over a
Speaker 1: hundred workers. They gathered money from lots of eager investors
Speaker 1: throughout New York, Massachusetts. In Connecticut, apparently they authored a
Speaker 1: prospectus about how they planned to extract money from the
Speaker 1: ocean that was somewhat successful in getting investors. And at
Speaker 1: these plants they operated these so called accumulators that supposedly
Speaker 1: worked on the same principal journe again had demonstrated before,
Speaker 1: but with different specifications. To quote from Bangs again in
Speaker 1: a January twentie nine article describing them, quote these boxes
Speaker 1: were made in part of copper and containing a battery, mercury,
Speaker 1: and unknown chemicals. It is recorded that one of the
Speaker 1: first accumulators that was used for demonstration purposes was lined
Speaker 1: with lead and was not much larger than a plate.
Speaker 1: The lead lining proved to be a bad idea, as
Speaker 1: the mercury could easily eat its way through this metal.
Speaker 1: Now we alluded to the fact earlier that journe again,
Speaker 1: unlike some of these other people who filed for patents,
Speaker 1: Journegan did not want to share his method. He he
Speaker 1: kept secret whatever his method for getting the gold out
Speaker 1: of the sea water was, and with hindsight the reason
Speaker 1: for that is obvious. Bangs reports that by February there
Speaker 1: were about a hundred of these accumulators operating under the
Speaker 1: wharf at the plant location, and more were on the way.
Speaker 1: Exactly how often these accumulators were checked for gold, and
Speaker 1: how the gold got into them when it was found,
Speaker 1: or or where the gold came from in general, is
Speaker 1: still a matter of some dispute, but a number of
Speaker 1: sources from the Times say that for a lot of
Speaker 1: these demonstrations there was a sleight of hand involving pre
Speaker 1: purchased gold, either above water or below, and especially with
Speaker 1: like the earlier demonstrations that had taken place beforehand with
Speaker 1: some of the first investors. The idea is that while
Speaker 1: Joern again was up on the dock doing his show,
Speaker 1: lowering the accumulator and and entertaining the possible investors his part,
Speaker 1: Charles Fisher was allegedly a skilled diver in possession of
Speaker 1: a diving suit yeah and it has been widely suggested
Speaker 1: that during at least some of these early demonstrations, Fisher
Speaker 1: would sneak underwater via a guideline to the side of
Speaker 1: the accumulator in his diving suit and then salt the
Speaker 1: box or boxes with gold or silver. And then later
Speaker 1: once they had actually established these plants and they had
Speaker 1: the accumulators working in the mill pond reservoir. At this point,
Speaker 1: I think it's more murky whether Fisher would actually need
Speaker 1: to go underwater to sault them, or whether you could
Speaker 1: just produce the gold, you know, generally at the plant
Speaker 1: later and say it came out of the accumulators. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly clear what always was happening there, but they
Speaker 1: did have gold, and it appeared this gold was just
Speaker 1: bought like it was sourced from jewelry and other stuff,
Speaker 1: and and then collected on the factory premises as if
Speaker 1: it had come out of the accumulators. And then the
Speaker 1: production of this gold from the accumulator supposedly was used
Speaker 1: to prove to more investors that they should give even
Speaker 1: more money. Now, apparently the local press was very optimistic
Speaker 1: and positive about Journe again and Fisher and the project
Speaker 1: as a whole. I found a page hosted by the
Speaker 1: main Memory network that quotes a Lubeck Herold article from saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the presence of these people is not only desirable for
Speaker 1: the amount of money that they will bring into the town,
Speaker 1: but we should welcome them for their social qualities. The
Speaker 1: officers of the company or earnest Christian gentleman, and many
Speaker 1: of their employees are Christians. We wish them all the
Speaker 1: success in their undertaking, and hope that they will take
Speaker 1: millions of dollars from the old pass him a quote bay,
Speaker 1: and we believe they will. With quantities of gold in
Speaker 1: the salt water, there is little need of a trip
Speaker 1: to Alaska. So again the idea of like Klondike sort
Speaker 1: of being in the back of everybody's mind. And and
Speaker 1: I wonder in what way that may actually make a
Speaker 1: hoax or or a scam like this more appealing if
Speaker 1: there's like if it's appealing to something that you could
Speaker 1: get in another way, but it would be much harder. Again,
Speaker 1: it comes back to too good to be true. It's
Speaker 1: the shortcut. It's there they're selling. They're selling the shortcut here,
Speaker 1: which of course doesn't pan out. Yeah, so there is
Speaker 1: a question of why did Jurnagan choose Lubeck for the
Speaker 1: side of the plants or Journagin and Fisher together, I
Speaker 1: guess well. Jurnagan claimed that it had to do with
Speaker 1: things like that extremely high title range, that we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier in the episode, but I've also read
Speaker 1: speculated that he was basically just trying to get out
Speaker 1: of range of easy investigation by his investors and stakeholders,
Speaker 1: who were mostly further south in New England. And it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that, unlike several other inventors of the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: again Jurnagin did not patent his process. He did not
Speaker 1: take out a patent on whatever he was doing to
Speaker 1: supposedly extract gold from the ocean. Instead, he kept it
Speaker 1: entirely secret, and again it's now obvious why so. The
Speaker 1: scam went on for a while, but eventually in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen so the year following, when they arrived
Speaker 1: in Lubeck, after they had gathered by some estimates, around
Speaker 1: a million dollars in total from investors, but just before
Speaker 1: the scheme was fully exposed and they were caught, Journ
Speaker 1: again and Fisher skip town, taking their investors money with them.
Speaker 1: And even worse than that, there were hundreds of workers
Speaker 1: who had been attracted to Lubeck to work for the
Speaker 1: company who were suddenly just left out of work. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Journ again fled to Europe with his family claiming that
Speaker 1: he himself had been duped by Fisher. That seems kind
Speaker 1: of unlikely. Uh, Fisher just disappeared entirely, and Journagin eventually
Speaker 1: returned some of the money that he stole. He returned
Speaker 1: some of it to to his investors. Reportedly, they made
Speaker 1: about thirty six cents on the dollar back from their investment,
Speaker 1: and Journegan went on to become a school teacher in
Speaker 1: the Philippines. But I'm still thinking about the question I
Speaker 1: opened with that you brought up just a second ago.
Speaker 1: You know, It's it's one thing when someone is selling
Speaker 1: you on a recognizable absurd to d like a pyramid
Speaker 1: scheme or magic beings or whatever. But in a way,
Speaker 1: developing scientific frontiers can make a magic being type swindle
Speaker 1: seem more possible because they emphasize the unarguable fact that
Speaker 1: we don't always really know what's possible. You know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just that a bunch of gullible investors from New
Speaker 1: York and New England got taken in by a free
Speaker 1: money scam. Remember that I mentioned earlier from the Stubs paper.
Speaker 1: The Nobel Prize winning chemists Sir William Ramsey was at
Speaker 1: least for a time inclined to believe that a gold
Speaker 1: from the sea experiment at Hailing Island in southern England
Speaker 1: could be leveraged into a profitable enterprise. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: further testing would prove this wasn't the case. But how
Speaker 1: exactly would people have known that this would never work
Speaker 1: at this point in history, you know, chemistry and mineral extraction.
Speaker 1: I feel like that they must have seemed like a
Speaker 1: kind of vast, untapped wilderness of infinite possibility. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and again I come back to the idea that
Speaker 1: it it feels so much like a technological amplification of
Speaker 1: gold panning. And if gold panning is possible without modern technology,
Speaker 1: then you know, might the same sort of thing be
Speaker 1: possible on a grander scale in the sea given advances
Speaker 1: in technology. I mean, I feel like the same sort
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, basic line of thinking you know,
Speaker 1: easily applies to things today or could apply to, uh,
Speaker 1: to technology today. Yeah, if if you don't understand the
Speaker 1: underlying principles, chemistry looks like magic. I mean, just to
Speaker 1: remind you again, like the cyanide extraction process for gold
Speaker 1: that probably would in some sense work, It just wouldn't
Speaker 1: work well enough to to make a profit. But anyway,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take another break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back we can talk more about the geology, chemistry,
Speaker 1: and ideology of gold. Thank alright, we're back. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on this a little bit on
Speaker 1: the show before, but I was thinking about the idea
Speaker 1: of where gold actually comes from. You know, thinking about
Speaker 1: gold existing dissolve throughout the oceans makes you wonder about
Speaker 1: questions like this because gold is a relatively rare element
Speaker 1: compared to the commonplaces of you know, hydrogen, oxygen, and
Speaker 1: iron and all that. But obviously veins of it can
Speaker 1: be found in Earth's crust and in the ocean as well.
Speaker 1: So where does gold actually come from? Well, the atomic
Speaker 1: origin of gold, like what makes the gold atoms. There's
Speaker 1: still some uncertainty here, but the evidence indicates that gold
Speaker 1: is produced an extremely violent stellar phenomena. Possibly it was,
Speaker 1: it used to be thought through something known as the
Speaker 1: r process of a supernova, you know, this rapid neutron capture.
Speaker 1: More recently, I've seen uh studies suggesting it's probably more
Speaker 1: likely through the collision of neutron stars. So think about
Speaker 1: that next time you're just looking at a piece of
Speaker 1: gold leaf for gold. Yeah, you're you're drinking the you know,
Speaker 1: the gold leaf liquor or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't. Didn't you ever know people who drank that stuff?
Speaker 1: I did. I knew someone who drank it exclusively. Yeah, wow, exclusively.
Speaker 1: That's I mean the I'm not saying they drank it
Speaker 1: only like it was their only liquid, but I think
Speaker 1: it was like the only there was there. It was
Speaker 1: their go to alcohol, um, which I mean, it's sparkly,
Speaker 1: it's going it kind of under. It's a perfect example
Speaker 1: of gold fascination. Like, like so much of our fascination
Speaker 1: with gold is based on the fact that it it
Speaker 1: looks neat, even if it doesn't actually contribute to the um,
Speaker 1: you know, effectiveness of a tool or a weapon, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's really only when you get into, you know, more
Speaker 1: into the modern technological world where you find gold is
Speaker 1: having a lot more function as opposed to just pure
Speaker 1: you know, shiny lure. Right right, Uh, well, you know
Speaker 1: what now that I'm sort of questioning because I was
Speaker 1: about to say, you know, like gold is so amazing
Speaker 1: because it comes from the collision of neutron stars probably
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. It comes from very violent stellar
Speaker 1: phenomena that are at levels of magnitude and power that
Speaker 1: you can't even comprehend. But on the other hand, I mean,
Speaker 1: tons of elements are like that, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: the actual atomic origin of all elements is mind boggling
Speaker 1: when you think about it. It's just that, like, this
Speaker 1: is mind boggling in this particular way. But gold is
Speaker 1: metal that looks like the Sun, and therefore it gets
Speaker 1: it gets a privileged status, I guess so. But then
Speaker 1: there's another question actually beyond that. So okay that obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, many heavy elements that are dispersed throughout the
Speaker 1: galaxy are created by violent stellar phenomenon supernovae or or
Speaker 1: the collision of neutron stars things like that. But then
Speaker 1: how does it get to Earth? So this is really
Speaker 1: interesting there. And there again this is another area where
Speaker 1: we don't have all the answers, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: some competing hypothesis uh to consider here. But the late
Speaker 1: Veneer hypothesis argues that gold and other specific materials were
Speaker 1: added to the Earth's crust roughly three point eight billion
Speaker 1: years ago via a bombardment of iridium rich meteorites known
Speaker 1: as chondrites. So this is the idea merged in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies following analysis of lunar rocks and the
Speaker 1: lack of gold and iridium in uh the lunar mantle.
Speaker 1: They found they found it on a lunar surface. However,
Speaker 1: and we have we have to remember that the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon is ancient lunar highland rocks returned by
Speaker 1: Apollo sixteen or roughly four billion years old. A rock
Speaker 1: from Apollo seventeen was found to be four point five
Speaker 1: billion years old. To put all of that in perspective,
Speaker 1: the Solar system itself is thought to be roughly uh
Speaker 1: four point uh five sixty eight billion years old, So
Speaker 1: some of these lunar rocks are as old as our
Speaker 1: solar system itself basically. And you can also look at
Speaker 1: the cratering. More craters mean geologically older surfaces. Fewer craters
Speaker 1: as with Earth indicates a geologically younger surface, right, because
Speaker 1: the Earth is geologically active, so it's constantly repaving its
Speaker 1: own surface in a way that the Moon is not. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the hypothesis here is that this golden bombardment um
Speaker 1: was churned up and incorporated into the Earth's mantle, while
Speaker 1: it only impacted the surface layer of the Moon. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, if you follow that hypothesis, you
Speaker 1: could say, okay, well that means gold is kind of alien.
Speaker 1: You know, it's from another world. It's it's it's extraterrestrial. Um.
Speaker 1: But but then we have some some other ideas out
Speaker 1: there as well. For instance, there's the rival magma ocean hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which argues that the gold was here all along. And
Speaker 1: here's how William Kramer explained it in the BBC News
Speaker 1: article does gold come from outer space? From quote all
Speaker 1: the gold and Earth's crust or the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: it was here on Earth all along? Most of it
Speaker 1: certainly alloyed with iron and migrated to the Earth's core,
Speaker 1: but a significant proportion, perhaps point two, dissolved into a
Speaker 1: seven hundred kilometer deep magma ocean within the Earth's outer mantle.
Speaker 1: Later the gold was brought back up to the crust
Speaker 1: by volcanic action. This is the stuff we wear around
Speaker 1: our necks and on our fingers today. WHOA Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's either so if one of these hypotheses is correct,
Speaker 1: it's either from a bombardment from space or an eruption
Speaker 1: of volcanoes basically, But then again, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like everything is due to violence in space, right if
Speaker 1: you go back far enough in terms of the history
Speaker 1: of our planet, etcetera. So you know, it's it's ultimately
Speaker 1: we're dealing with with processes and events on a scale
Speaker 1: so far beyond the you know, the limits of a
Speaker 1: human lifetime and human experience that it's all, uh, it's
Speaker 1: all the machinations of the gods. Right, there are no
Speaker 1: bundane atoms. All atoms are beautiful, yeah, but they're not
Speaker 1: all equally valuable. So people did continue the search for
Speaker 1: gold in the ocean after the examples we've already talked about.
Speaker 1: One of the questions I was wondering about, is, okay,
Speaker 1: have have modern methods changed our picture at all of
Speaker 1: whether there is really gold in the ocean like worse
Speaker 1: On stat and the other nineteenth century chemists correct, is
Speaker 1: the really gold dissolved in the ocean? And the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, But modern methods revealed that there's probably even
Speaker 1: less of it than previously estimated. According to some materials
Speaker 1: I was reading by the n O a A, there
Speaker 1: there is gold in sea water, but it's actually difficult
Speaker 1: to measure exactly how much, and it does seem to
Speaker 1: vary in different parts of the ocean. But but they
Speaker 1: linked to one study using modern methods that was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety by K. Kennison, Faulkner and J. M.
Speaker 1: Edmond called Golden Seawater in the journal Earth and Planetary
Speaker 1: Science Letters, and these authors found quote, the measured concentrations
Speaker 1: of gold in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are within
Speaker 1: a factor of two to three of recently reported values
Speaker 1: in Pacific waters and nearly three orders of magnitude less
Speaker 1: than reported in the literature prior to nineteen eight, indicating
Speaker 1: contamination problems with the earlier data. And apparently, uh there
Speaker 1: are places that have more gold in the water than
Speaker 1: other places. They point out Mediterranean deep waters apparently have
Speaker 1: higher concentrations, as do fluids surrounding hydrothermal vents, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: But the n O a. A. Summarizes the findings of
Speaker 1: this paper to say that there is quote only about
Speaker 1: one gram of gold for every one hundred million metric
Speaker 1: tons of ocean water in the Atlantic and North Pacific,
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of water you'd have to turn
Speaker 1: through to get a gram of gold. Yeah, you need
Speaker 1: to take a lot of patients, right, and a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. I mean, ultimately your power bill would be
Speaker 1: way more than you could sell the gold. For just
Speaker 1: one more historical instance, I came across of of people
Speaker 1: trying to turn gold or claiming that they would be
Speaker 1: able to to turn the ocean into gold. There was
Speaker 1: an article in The New York Times in um on
Speaker 1: March twenty seven, nineteen thirty four, by William L. Lawrence
Speaker 1: called Tapping Ocean's gold treasure predicted as coming in decade,
Speaker 1: which I think is a particularly awful title. I don't
Speaker 1: know how he could have phrased something that bad. That's
Speaker 1: it's like four layers of passive voice or something. Um.
Speaker 1: But so here's a brief sketch of the article. What
Speaker 1: was then the Ethel Dow Chemical Company, which was a
Speaker 1: joint venture of the Ethel Company in the Dow Chemical Company.
Speaker 1: They successfully deployed a plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, which
Speaker 1: was able to extract bro mean from seawater, and based
Speaker 1: on the principles that were in operation at this plant,
Speaker 1: a couple of prominent chemists predicted at the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four Annual convention of the American Chemical Society that within
Speaker 1: the next ten years they would be able to extract quote,
Speaker 1: the three quadrillion dollar treasure in pure gold known to
Speaker 1: exist in very dilute form in the waters of the
Speaker 1: Seven Seas, very quadrillion dollar treasure that I can you
Speaker 1: imagine that as like an actual official business plan where
Speaker 1: they're like and and then we know over the next
Speaker 1: you know, a few years, we're gonna make three quadrillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Our valuation of our company is elevenies zillion dollars. Oh
Speaker 1: that's great, but interesting historical coincidence here. Who were the
Speaker 1: chemists who made this prediction. Well, so two of them
Speaker 1: were dal Chemical guys, Willard H. Dow and Leroy C. Stewart,
Speaker 1: but both of dal Chemical. But the other one who
Speaker 1: made this prediction at this meeting in was none other
Speaker 1: than Thomas Midgeley, who was at the time VP of
Speaker 1: the Ethel Corporation and who was a brilliant chemists, no doubt,
Speaker 1: but who is now probably more famous for developing two
Speaker 1: major technologies, leaded gasoline and chlora flora carbon's. That's both
Speaker 1: quite a quite a resume. Uh so, Yeah, Actually, the
Speaker 1: name of the company Midgeley was president of at the
Speaker 1: time that the Ethel Company was the brand name for
Speaker 1: tetra Ethel lead gasoline, which midgually developed as an anti
Speaker 1: knocking agent. So the idea was that the additive, the
Speaker 1: the added lead content, would make the gasoline burn more evenly. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the burning of leaded gasoline just blankets the environment and lead,
Speaker 1: which which is just a bad thing to do in
Speaker 1: every imaginable way. Then, on top of that, he also
Speaker 1: developed free on, which probably would have seemed more harmless
Speaker 1: at the time. This was the first of the commercial CFCs,
Speaker 1: and this was in the search for a non toxic refrigerant.
Speaker 1: Of course, free on was very successful until the CFC
Speaker 1: started to get into the upper atmosphere, and then they
Speaker 1: began to eat away at the planets ozone layer. So
Speaker 1: I was reading the words of an environmental historian named J. R.
Speaker 1: McNeil in a two thousand and one book where he writes,
Speaker 1: quote Midgely, the same research chemists who figured out that
Speaker 1: lead would enhance engine performance had more impact on the
Speaker 1: atmosphere than any single other organism in Earth history. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's one of the guys saying three quadrillion dollars
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. But anyway, so these guys the the
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society meeting in thirty four, we're arguing, Look,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be impossible to profitably extract
Speaker 1: bromine from seawater, but now we've climbed that hill. So
Speaker 1: other substances like gold and silver and radium, they're just
Speaker 1: next in line. We just need to refine our methods.
Speaker 1: But of course it never happened. But this makes sense, right.
Speaker 1: It's like, as technology continues to advance, we kind of
Speaker 1: keep making the same mistakes, right, We keep coming back
Speaker 1: to far fetched ideas from the past and asking yourselves, well,
Speaker 1: is it time? Is it now? Yeah? I guess so.
Speaker 1: I mean, others keep bringing this idea up basically every decade.
Speaker 1: It seems like I never saw this personally, but I
Speaker 1: was reading that. Apparently there was a guy on that
Speaker 1: TV show shar arc Tank. I was reading about this
Speaker 1: in an Atlas Obscura article about getting gold from seawater
Speaker 1: by Eric Grundhauser, and he mentioned so on the show
Speaker 1: Shark Tank. There's a guy who proposed a clean energy
Speaker 1: device that he just claimed as a byproduct would refine
Speaker 1: gold from the ocean. And I do not think he
Speaker 1: won the prize money or whatever. But there's another way
Speaker 1: in which people are still, in a practical sense looking
Speaker 1: to the oceans for mineral wealth and precious metals, because
Speaker 1: while it might not actually be economically practical to capture
Speaker 1: gold and other precious metals from the seawater itself, the
Speaker 1: ocean does contain accessible mineral riches in other ways, Like
Speaker 1: what about the idea of ocean floor mining. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: indeed there is a high potential for sea floor mining,
Speaker 1: at least in the future. This is an again another
Speaker 1: area where the technology is not quite there to the
Speaker 1: point where it would be, um, you know, actually profitable
Speaker 1: to go after it. But technology can ttinues to advance,
Speaker 1: as does um you know that the demand for some
Speaker 1: of these substances. But yeah, particularly gold and other metals. Um. However,
Speaker 1: the practice comes with severe risks for deep sea ecosystems
Speaker 1: that were either beginning only beginning to understand, or in
Speaker 1: many cases are still shrouded in mystery or just unknown
Speaker 1: to us. I have to refer back to we've talked
Speaker 1: about the moon in this episode, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: the deep ocean. Uh, as we've pointed out before, you know,
Speaker 1: we ultimately know more about the surface details of the
Speaker 1: Moon than we know about the depths of Earth's own ocean.
Speaker 1: You know, I specifically remember in our conversation with Diva
Speaker 1: aim On here on the show The Marine Biologists Too.
Speaker 1: That was a great episode, I thought, But she she
Speaker 1: was warning specifically about the potential dangers of deep sea
Speaker 1: mining to underwater ecosystems. Yeah, because a lot of it
Speaker 1: revolves around hydrothermal events, which we already mentioned in passing
Speaker 1: in the episode here. Now, if you've watched your share
Speaker 1: of nature documentaries, which I imagine a lot of our
Speaker 1: listeners have, you've likely seen footage, incredible footage of these
Speaker 1: amazing places where chimney shaped black smokers, you know, boil
Speaker 1: the sea water and around which entire ecosystems of strange
Speaker 1: creatures thrive in the darkness, including the so called hof crab,
Speaker 1: which are you know it actually not crabs. Their their
Speaker 1: deep sea squat lobsters. But they're they're very weird looking.
Speaker 1: The whole environment is weird looking. It's it's it's this
Speaker 1: alien seeming world that has actually helped us better imagine
Speaker 1: how life might thrive in a truly alien environment, perhaps
Speaker 1: in a dark or hidden ocean somewhere. Yeah, Like if
Speaker 1: we were ever to discover that there were life on
Speaker 1: say Jupiter's moon Europa. Uh, understanding life around hydrothermal vents
Speaker 1: on Earth might be a good guide to understand what's
Speaker 1: possible on another moon or planetary body like that. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so these these sites are are very impressive, and they're
Speaker 1: a great there's a great deal of scientific interest and
Speaker 1: what's going on there. But these vent sites also produce
Speaker 1: massive sulfide deposits rich in metals or sea floor massive
Speaker 1: sulfide deposits are sms. So here high pressure, superheated fluids
Speaker 1: escape through cracks and they mix with the cold sea
Speaker 1: water and when this happens, minerals form and fall to
Speaker 1: the sea floor. And these include high concentrations of copper, gold, silver, zinc,
Speaker 1: and lead. Now on Earth's surface we have massive sulfide
Speaker 1: deposits due to volcanic action, and these are major sources
Speaker 1: of copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold on the surface. Uh.
Speaker 1: But so these sites would would seem to offer the
Speaker 1: same riches and uh, again, the technology is not quite
Speaker 1: bare to the point where we could actually go after
Speaker 1: these resources in a way that would be profitable, like
Speaker 1: completely putting aside any environmental concerns, Like it just hasn't
Speaker 1: crossed that threshold yet, but there's a lot of concern
Speaker 1: that it is about to. And sites in the Pacific
Speaker 1: are of our our special interests because they've been proven
Speaker 1: to produce high concentrations of the desired metals, plus their
Speaker 1: shallower than other sites and therefore easier to potentially reach
Speaker 1: and harvest, like these are going to be the first
Speaker 1: places that people go after. Also, these sites are generally
Speaker 1: under under the domain of Pacific nations, where there may
Speaker 1: there might not be sufficient governance or management in place
Speaker 1: yet for such endeavors. I mean that on top of
Speaker 1: just the relative newness of the entire prospect of deep
Speaker 1: sea mining. So there are organizations involved in efforts to
Speaker 1: protect these areas or in other cases like see that
Speaker 1: any mining efforts there are done in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't just decimate the environment. You mentioned our interview with
Speaker 1: deep c biologist and ocean advocate Diva amon Uh, and
Speaker 1: she specifically pointed out the work of the Deep Sea
Speaker 1: Conservation Coalition, which everyone can learn about at Save the
Speaker 1: High Seas dot org. They point out that these minerals
Speaker 1: have thus far proven too difficult to reach, too expensive,
Speaker 1: and the technology to do it effectively regardless of environmental
Speaker 1: concerns isn't quite there yet. But the concern here again
Speaker 1: is that the technology will get there. Major players are
Speaker 1: already involved with their eyes on the deep seabed mining
Speaker 1: riches and quote it's only very recently, as technological advancement
Speaker 1: has been matched by escalating commodity prices in demand that
Speaker 1: the highly speculative practice has begun to be considered economically
Speaker 1: viable by some companies. So work needs to be done
Speaker 1: now to protect these environments, you know, to make sure
Speaker 1: that that there there are laws in place, um, that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of governance there and it's not just
Speaker 1: a free for all um. Again, I highly recommend visiting
Speaker 1: Save the High Seas dot org to learn more and
Speaker 1: also consider checking out our chat with Diva Amon from
Speaker 1: last year. Yeah. Absolutely, that was a good one. And
Speaker 1: I actually have one more uh thing that that came
Speaker 1: up in the research I'd like to to to bring
Speaker 1: out here. Briefly. We've we've spoken about all these different
Speaker 1: ways of like trying to coax the gold out of
Speaker 1: its hiding place, right, how to trick it out of
Speaker 1: the ocean or out of the the deep sea floor,
Speaker 1: et cetera, or even out of the streams and the mountains.
Speaker 1: So there's a There's an additional idea that they came
Speaker 1: across here called phyto mining, and basically the premise here
Speaker 1: is that some plants have the ability to absorb minerals
Speaker 1: through their roots and concentrate metals such as nickel, uh cadmium,
Speaker 1: and zinc. These plants are hyper accumulators. Uh. Now, there
Speaker 1: are no gold hyper accumulators because gold doesn't dissolve in
Speaker 1: water all that easily, but it can seemingly be forced
Speaker 1: to do so. So there's this technique that was proposed
Speaker 1: by Chris Anderson, environmental geochemist at Massi University in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and his idea was to plant fast growing leafy plants
Speaker 1: like mustard plants on soil containing gold, such as soil
Speaker 1: found near gold mines, that sort of thing. When the
Speaker 1: plants reach their full height, you treat the soil to
Speaker 1: make the gold more soluble. Then the plant will abser
Speaker 1: orb the gold up into its biomass, and then you
Speaker 1: harvest it. Huh. Interesting. Now, the harvesting apparently is more
Speaker 1: difficult than it sounds, because you can't just burn the
Speaker 1: plant and then like get picked the gold out of
Speaker 1: the ash, because gold is gonna gonna escape in the
Speaker 1: smoke via the ash, So that instead you'd have to
Speaker 1: use a chemical process involving like strong acids. And the
Speaker 1: problem is that these might be too environmentally risky in
Speaker 1: and of themselves. Uh. Anderson's idea is that perhaps you
Speaker 1: could use this alongside the just the basic absorption of
Speaker 1: soul contaminants, so you would be planting u these plants
Speaker 1: manipulating the soil in a way so that they're removing
Speaker 1: soil containments and as a byproduct, removing gold as well.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I don't think I've ever even heard of
Speaker 1: this possibility. This is this is brand new to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't look like there's been a ton
Speaker 1: of work on it, but there has. There are some
Speaker 1: other um papers about it out there, and some of
Speaker 1: them are I was looking at another one as well
Speaker 1: that seemed to frame it as a more like environmentally
Speaker 1: stable solution. But um, but but I don't know the
Speaker 1: other source I was looking at was saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to consider these acids that are used to
Speaker 1: treat the soil. So uh So, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I guess is it it's it's perfect for
Speaker 1: someone to scam people right now, right. Yes, So if
Speaker 1: you want to become the next Reverend Prescott forward Journe again,
Speaker 1: you just need to come up with a good story
Speaker 1: about a vision of plants that you had while asleep
Speaker 1: in a train car. And then you find a suitable
Speaker 1: small town and you say, I'm going to make mustard
Speaker 1: greens into gold. Yeah, I can see it now. I
Speaker 1: think it would make for a great um. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it could be a great plot element in the story
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, there's a there's actually there's a Live
Speaker 1: Science article about this title. There's Gold and then Our
Speaker 1: Plants by a Lindsay Kunkle And this was from well,
Speaker 1: I'm immediately thinking of Pipper. Oh yeah, yeah, from Final Sacrifice. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Final Sacrifice famously um riffed on Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: three thousand. So anyway, I don't know about gold from plants,
Speaker 1: or certainly I don't know about about finding the Lost
Speaker 1: City of Zeos. Uh. Here uh in Canada. But but
Speaker 1: certainly I think we have explored the possibility of finding
Speaker 1: hidden gold in the ocean. Um technically yes, but with
Speaker 1: some with some definite asterisk is technically yes, practically no.
Speaker 1: If somebody comes to you with a with a get
Speaker 1: rich quick scheme about it, you should uh, you should
Speaker 1: have a chemist friend look into it first. Exactly all right, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll go in close the episode out right there, But
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone about this topic. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly if you have any connection to some of the
Speaker 1: parts of the world that we discussed here, and if
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, you can find us
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: Just makes your rate, review and subscribe huge, Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
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