1
00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:08,280
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

2
00:00:08,320 --> 00:00:11,360
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

3
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,280
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This episode originally aired

4
00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:18,079
Speaker 1: on July nine, and it was called The Tide of Gold.

5
00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:21,079
Speaker 1: This one is uh is really fun because we get

6
00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:24,520
Speaker 1: into a strange hoax that took place in Maine in

7
00:00:24,560 --> 00:00:27,440
Speaker 1: the late eighteen nineties I think, or at least the

8
00:00:27,520 --> 00:00:31,320
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century sometime. So you're gonna get some some chemistry,

9
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:37,160
Speaker 1: some metallurgy, and some some some historical shenanigans and tomfoolery

10
00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:52,520
Speaker 1: absolutely Golvin. Let's dive right in. On a train coming

11
00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:56,840
Speaker 1: from Washington, the worthy Minister had reposed himself and his birth,

12
00:00:57,360 --> 00:00:59,880
Speaker 1: when in a burst of light, the Lord appeared to

13
00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:03,200
Speaker 1: him and gave into his keeping the secret of how

14
00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:06,800
Speaker 1: gold could be taken from the sea. Mr Joern, again

15
00:01:07,080 --> 00:01:09,640
Speaker 1: having the mystery direct from Heaven, was not one to

16
00:01:09,760 --> 00:01:12,959
Speaker 1: flaunt it in the faces of the uninspired scientists, but

17
00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:15,720
Speaker 1: kept it locked in his own heart, as all such

18
00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:27,559
Speaker 1: revelations should be. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind

19
00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:36,960
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to Stuff

20
00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:39,440
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and

21
00:01:39,640 --> 00:01:42,120
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And that opening reading was from the

22
00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:46,560
Speaker 1: Hartford Current, from an article from January seventeenth n called

23
00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:50,600
Speaker 1: Dredging Gold from Seawater. And I'm really excited about this episode.

24
00:01:50,600 --> 00:01:53,800
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about a great, a fantastic historical

25
00:01:53,960 --> 00:01:57,720
Speaker 1: gold swindle. But before we get into the historical details,

26
00:01:58,200 --> 00:01:59,800
Speaker 1: I've got a question that I want to think about.

27
00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:03,680
Speaker 1: This might frame our consideration of this historical episode. Uh.

28
00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,400
Speaker 1: You know how sometimes you see people passing around an

29
00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:11,200
Speaker 1: article online about some apparently miraculous new technology that really

30
00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:14,000
Speaker 1: sounds too good to be true. For example, the one

31
00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:18,360
Speaker 1: that easily comes to my mind is the various proposed

32
00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:23,880
Speaker 1: reactionless drives that would somehow supposedly move a spacecraft without

33
00:02:23,919 --> 00:02:27,399
Speaker 1: any propellant or exhaust, apparently in violation of the law

34
00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:30,720
Speaker 1: of conservation of momentum. Now, whenever one of these things

35
00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:35,720
Speaker 1: makes the rounds, I see exasperated skeptics responding with, you know,

36
00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:39,000
Speaker 1: the standard line, if something sounds too good to be true,

37
00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,160
Speaker 1: it probably is. Now. Of course, I totally agree with

38
00:02:42,200 --> 00:02:46,919
Speaker 1: their skepticism about these particular technologies reactionless drives and so forth.

39
00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:49,400
Speaker 1: But I want to ask it like step back and

40
00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:52,200
Speaker 1: ask a broader question, which is, how do you actually

41
00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:55,360
Speaker 1: know when something is too good to be true? If

42
00:02:55,600 --> 00:03:00,640
Speaker 1: if previously unexplored frontiers of science are involved in the

43
00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:04,520
Speaker 1: case of something like a reactionless drive, actual physicists and

44
00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:07,800
Speaker 1: aerospace engineers and people like that are probably in a

45
00:03:07,840 --> 00:03:11,160
Speaker 1: good position to swap the idea down based on years

46
00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:14,920
Speaker 1: of familiarity with that particular problem space and the solutions

47
00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:17,639
Speaker 1: available within it. Um. And of course you know their

48
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:20,239
Speaker 1: their knowledge of the general laws of physics and trying

49
00:03:20,320 --> 00:03:23,320
Speaker 1: to push against those laws throughout a career. But if

50
00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:27,960
Speaker 1: you're just a regular person without any particular expertise, and

51
00:03:28,080 --> 00:03:31,600
Speaker 1: somebody comes to you with a claim about some you know,

52
00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:35,560
Speaker 1: some new technological capability, how do you know when it's

53
00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:38,720
Speaker 1: too good to be true? Especially when the mechanisms that

54
00:03:38,800 --> 00:03:42,920
Speaker 1: supposedly make it possible lie underneath the shroud of sub

55
00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:47,440
Speaker 1: microscopic chemistry or like invisible fields and forces and physics.

56
00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:51,760
Speaker 1: I mean, the short answer would be like why, or

57
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:54,640
Speaker 1: the counter question would be why are you coming to

58
00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:59,120
Speaker 1: me with this? You know if of the you know,

59
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:03,800
Speaker 1: if you have some sort of zero gravity um. Uh,

60
00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:07,800
Speaker 1: technique or you know, whatever the thing happens to be. Um, like,

61
00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:10,600
Speaker 1: why why are you coming to me about it? Why

62
00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:13,200
Speaker 1: are you trying to sell me a product that has

63
00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:16,520
Speaker 1: to do with it instead of capitalizing on it yourself. Yeah.

64
00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:19,760
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good point about noticing when

65
00:04:19,960 --> 00:04:24,080
Speaker 1: these these types of technologies or claims are either being

66
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:26,719
Speaker 1: sold to you. I mean, there's definitely a red flag

67
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:28,719
Speaker 1: if somebody's like trying to get your money, you're trying

68
00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:31,600
Speaker 1: to get an investment. It's another thing if there if

69
00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:34,120
Speaker 1: you're just being told about them and sort of asked

70
00:04:34,120 --> 00:04:37,560
Speaker 1: to buy in intellectually. But even then there is something

71
00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:41,200
Speaker 1: that there is an important difference between somebody who takes

72
00:04:41,200 --> 00:04:44,440
Speaker 1: a claim directly to say the popular press on the

73
00:04:44,480 --> 00:04:48,600
Speaker 1: internet versus hashing it out in in say journals where

74
00:04:48,680 --> 00:04:52,800
Speaker 1: experts would be the people arguing about it. Yeah. Um,

75
00:04:52,839 --> 00:04:55,120
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of times it implies that there

76
00:04:55,240 --> 00:04:59,039
Speaker 1: is a lack of expertise involved, that this is not

77
00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:01,880
Speaker 1: a like someone as a professional in their field and

78
00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:06,320
Speaker 1: they're they're claiming to have solved a professional level problem. Um.

79
00:05:06,640 --> 00:05:08,679
Speaker 1: I think. I think Zero Gravity, if I remember correctly,

80
00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:11,159
Speaker 1: is one of these that you see where a lot

81
00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:15,440
Speaker 1: of amateur um individuals. I think they have they have

82
00:05:15,560 --> 00:05:17,680
Speaker 1: solved it, and they end up making like the same

83
00:05:17,720 --> 00:05:20,240
Speaker 1: mistakes that other people have made in the past, or

84
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,320
Speaker 1: mistake the you know, the same phenomena as as zero gravity,

85
00:05:24,480 --> 00:05:28,520
Speaker 1: and they'll then submit it to NASA. I think, sorry,

86
00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:30,440
Speaker 1: do you mean like anti gravity? Is that what you're

87
00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:33,760
Speaker 1: talking about? Yeah, like a like a zero G anti

88
00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:38,520
Speaker 1: gravity type of technology. Okay, I'm not as familiar with those,

89
00:05:38,520 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 1: but yeah, that seems like that would obviously fit right

90
00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:43,560
Speaker 1: in with the kind of thing I'm thinking about. But like,

91
00:05:43,640 --> 00:05:47,159
Speaker 1: you can understand how the average person could be easily

92
00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:49,880
Speaker 1: confused here when thinking about the cutting edge of of

93
00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:53,720
Speaker 1: technology and uh, you know, especially dealing with microscopic or

94
00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:57,120
Speaker 1: sub microscopic realms, because you can make a list of

95
00:05:57,200 --> 00:06:00,839
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of real technology that really on principles

96
00:06:00,839 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 1: of physics and chemistry and biology that are invisible to

97
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:08,440
Speaker 1: everyday life, but once they were discovered, they unlocked vast

98
00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:12,040
Speaker 1: and what really would be almost magical seeming power and

99
00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:14,839
Speaker 1: wealth when they were first harnessed. You know, you you

100
00:06:14,839 --> 00:06:19,719
Speaker 1: can think of examples like nuclear power, microprocessors, antibiotics, and

101
00:06:19,760 --> 00:06:22,920
Speaker 1: to a person who didn't understand the underlying science and

102
00:06:23,200 --> 00:06:26,160
Speaker 1: couldn't see why it is that these things worked. All

103
00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:29,320
Speaker 1: of these ideas might have sounded too good to be true.

104
00:06:29,800 --> 00:06:31,920
Speaker 1: And I think it's this kind of ambiguity that makes

105
00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:34,560
Speaker 1: the story we're going to talk about today especially interesting,

106
00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:37,960
Speaker 1: because today I want to start off by talking about

107
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:42,880
Speaker 1: a fascinating historical hoax and swindle that took place in

108
00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:47,040
Speaker 1: New England near the turn of the twentieth century. Now, Robert,

109
00:06:47,080 --> 00:06:49,800
Speaker 1: I know, um, you spent part of your life in

110
00:06:49,839 --> 00:06:52,200
Speaker 1: eastern Canada, didn't you. Did you ever live Was it

111
00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:56,000
Speaker 1: in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia? It was, well, it was Newfoundland.

112
00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:58,919
Speaker 1: Oh Newfoundland. Sorry I said that wrong. No, now you

113
00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:01,279
Speaker 1: you said you at it the same way that that

114
00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:05,400
Speaker 1: people who, um, who are not of Newfoundland have never

115
00:07:05,440 --> 00:07:11,640
Speaker 1: lived there, often referred to it Newfoundland but not in Newfoundland. Yeah,

116
00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:13,880
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, I lived there as a child for

117
00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:16,480
Speaker 1: a few years. Well, it's up towards that part of

118
00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:18,720
Speaker 1: the continent that we're going to travel. So if you

119
00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:21,280
Speaker 1: if you look at a map and you try to

120
00:07:21,320 --> 00:07:26,120
Speaker 1: find the easternmost settlement on the United States Mainland, what

121
00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:28,480
Speaker 1: you'll have to do is you'll follow the East Coast

122
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:31,600
Speaker 1: up the edge of Maine to a point of the U.

123
00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:34,160
Speaker 1: S border with Canada. And this part of Maine is

124
00:07:34,240 --> 00:07:37,600
Speaker 1: just across a body of water called the Bay of Fundy,

125
00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:40,440
Speaker 1: and it's across the Bay of Fundy from Nova Scotia.

126
00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:44,640
Speaker 1: Uh So, the easternmost human settlement before you hit Canada

127
00:07:45,080 --> 00:07:48,760
Speaker 1: is a little coastal town called loup Beck that's spelled

128
00:07:48,880 --> 00:07:52,160
Speaker 1: l u b e c. And today Lubec has a

129
00:07:52,200 --> 00:07:54,840
Speaker 1: population of something like twelve hundred people or so. It's

130
00:07:54,880 --> 00:07:58,720
Speaker 1: between twelve hundred and hundred last count I saw, and

131
00:07:58,800 --> 00:08:01,280
Speaker 1: historically it's it's kind of a fishing town. It got

132
00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:03,960
Speaker 1: much of its livelihood from the sea, pulling in fish,

133
00:08:04,160 --> 00:08:07,760
Speaker 1: clams and lobster, stuff like that. But the ocean around

134
00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:11,800
Speaker 1: Lubec and the Bay of Funding generally is unusual. I

135
00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:16,680
Speaker 1: was reading from a article by Joyce Kryshak in uh

136
00:08:16,680 --> 00:08:21,080
Speaker 1: in a magazine about Maine called Down East, and she's

137
00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:24,160
Speaker 1: writing about the the ocean in this area. She writes, quote,

138
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:27,520
Speaker 1: it's the roiling tide, the heartbeat of the ocean which

139
00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:31,640
Speaker 1: pounds harder here that makes Lubec feel at once isolated

140
00:08:31,680 --> 00:08:36,000
Speaker 1: and enchanted in a tangle of islands, channels and ragged bays,

141
00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:40,440
Speaker 1: the incoming tide clashes against a submerged mountain and the

142
00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:43,800
Speaker 1: outflow of the St. Croix River. That's that's spelled like

143
00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:45,520
Speaker 1: c r O I X. I don't know if that's

144
00:08:45,559 --> 00:08:49,560
Speaker 1: croy or crawl locally, but she goes on creating chaotic currents,

145
00:08:49,679 --> 00:08:54,520
Speaker 1: fevered swells, and unusual phenomena like whirlpools and water spouts.

146
00:08:55,520 --> 00:08:57,880
Speaker 1: Uh and so. Part of what makes the sea around

147
00:08:57,960 --> 00:09:01,240
Speaker 1: Lubec so unusual is that the whole Bay of Fundy

148
00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:05,800
Speaker 1: has an enormous title range. Now, the Bay of Fundy

149
00:09:05,960 --> 00:09:09,240
Speaker 1: is again this large body of water between mainland New

150
00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:12,679
Speaker 1: Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and it has some of the

151
00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:16,800
Speaker 1: greatest title variation of anywhere in the world. There places

152
00:09:16,880 --> 00:09:19,520
Speaker 1: deeper towards the head of the bay where the difference

153
00:09:19,559 --> 00:09:23,280
Speaker 1: between high tide and low tide is close to sixteen

154
00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:26,800
Speaker 1: meters or more than fifty feet, which is just unbelievable,

155
00:09:26,840 --> 00:09:29,559
Speaker 1: and especially if you look up pictures of this, it's

156
00:09:29,600 --> 00:09:32,760
Speaker 1: astonishing to see, like when the cea retreats, how much

157
00:09:32,880 --> 00:09:36,679
Speaker 1: land is revealed. But anyway, I was wondering what causes

158
00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:39,920
Speaker 1: this huge title variation and I was reading about it

159
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:42,800
Speaker 1: in a short article by a project called Exploring Our

160
00:09:42,840 --> 00:09:46,280
Speaker 1: Fluid Earth, which is hosted by the University of Hawaii website,

161
00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:49,199
Speaker 1: and they give a couple of reasons for this huge

162
00:09:49,240 --> 00:09:52,560
Speaker 1: title range. The first is geography, so they say that

163
00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:54,760
Speaker 1: the bay, you know, They point out that the bay

164
00:09:54,880 --> 00:09:57,400
Speaker 1: is sort of V shaped, with the wide part of

165
00:09:57,520 --> 00:10:00,400
Speaker 1: the mouth and the narrow part at the head, and

166
00:10:00,480 --> 00:10:03,560
Speaker 1: this means as the tide flows into the bay from

167
00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:06,160
Speaker 1: the mouth toward the head, it gets more and more

168
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,160
Speaker 1: compressed as it goes. So try to imagine a wave

169
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:13,000
Speaker 1: of water flowing into a trough that gets narrower and

170
00:10:13,080 --> 00:10:15,960
Speaker 1: narrower along its length. Where would the compressed water go

171
00:10:16,120 --> 00:10:18,960
Speaker 1: well as to go vertical, as to go up. But

172
00:10:19,040 --> 00:10:22,160
Speaker 1: the second reason for the tidal range is that because

173
00:10:22,200 --> 00:10:24,000
Speaker 1: of the shape of the bay, that the water in

174
00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:27,839
Speaker 1: the bay forms a standing wave. And the short version

175
00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:29,520
Speaker 1: of the way this works is that there are there

176
00:10:29,559 --> 00:10:33,000
Speaker 1: are two different frequencies controlling the waves in the bay.

177
00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:36,640
Speaker 1: One is the bay's natural resonant frequency, which is the

178
00:10:36,679 --> 00:10:39,360
Speaker 1: period across which the water tends to slash back and

179
00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:42,000
Speaker 1: forth within the bay itself, and then the other is

180
00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:45,200
Speaker 1: the broader tidal frequency, which is the period across which

181
00:10:45,200 --> 00:10:49,280
Speaker 1: the ocean at large retreats and advances against the shore

182
00:10:49,800 --> 00:10:52,200
Speaker 1: and then the bay of funding. These periods are almost

183
00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:55,360
Speaker 1: exactly the same length, about twelve and a half hours,

184
00:10:55,880 --> 00:10:58,840
Speaker 1: so they pile on one another to make these massive

185
00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:03,160
Speaker 1: differences between and low tide. Again, maybe around six meters

186
00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:05,480
Speaker 1: or twenty ft near the mouth of the bay and

187
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:08,360
Speaker 1: up to around sixteen meters or more than fifty feet

188
00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:10,760
Speaker 1: near the head. All of this to say, I think

189
00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:12,439
Speaker 1: it's the kind of place where if you were a

190
00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 1: visitor there, you might imagine that someone could work miracles

191
00:11:16,080 --> 00:11:18,880
Speaker 1: from the sea. There's there's a strong kind of deep

192
00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:23,680
Speaker 1: ones energy. Yeah, we're talking it just really violent seas

193
00:11:23,720 --> 00:11:25,959
Speaker 1: at times. And uh and and certainly yeah, you look

194
00:11:25,960 --> 00:11:30,199
Speaker 1: at these pictures of the tide differential and it's it's staggering.

195
00:11:30,240 --> 00:11:31,960
Speaker 1: It looks almost if you didn't know what you're looking at,

196
00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:34,800
Speaker 1: you would think it, um, you know, there's something apocalyptic

197
00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:38,400
Speaker 1: has occurred here. Yeah. Yeah, they're like great photos of

198
00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:42,040
Speaker 1: say a marina with docks and boats, and then that

199
00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:44,200
Speaker 1: that at high tide the boats will be afloat. But

200
00:11:44,240 --> 00:11:46,400
Speaker 1: then when the sea retreats, all the boats are just

201
00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:49,600
Speaker 1: sort of sitting in the sediment. But anyway, so to

202
00:11:49,679 --> 00:11:53,359
Speaker 1: the town of Lubeck, into this strange land of lobsters

203
00:11:53,400 --> 00:11:56,800
Speaker 1: and other worldly tides. In the year of eighteen ninety

204
00:11:56,840 --> 00:12:00,600
Speaker 1: seven there came a couple of business partners with a

205
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:05,679
Speaker 1: really interesting geological scam for the ages. Their claim was

206
00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:09,719
Speaker 1: they were going to turn the ocean into gold. Now

207
00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:12,080
Speaker 1: I want to mention a book here because this was

208
00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:14,880
Speaker 1: one of my major sources. It's a book edited by

209
00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:18,120
Speaker 1: a scholar named Ronald pescha called The Great Gold Swindle

210
00:12:18,200 --> 00:12:22,400
Speaker 1: of Lubeck, Maine from Arcadia Publishing. Most of the text

211
00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:24,840
Speaker 1: of this book is actually a series of articles written

212
00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:27,760
Speaker 1: by a journalist or a local writer from the back

213
00:12:27,880 --> 00:12:31,840
Speaker 1: named Kerry C. Bangs for the Luebeck Harold between nineteen

214
00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:35,320
Speaker 1: forty nine and nineteen fifty one, and then these articles

215
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:40,160
Speaker 1: were edited and supplemented by Ronald pescha Um. Unfortunately, as

216
00:12:40,240 --> 00:12:43,000
Speaker 1: this book makes clear, a lot of the history here

217
00:12:43,200 --> 00:12:47,520
Speaker 1: is laced through with conflicting accounts from different sources. A

218
00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:51,079
Speaker 1: lot of the original local reporting from the Lubeck Herald

219
00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:54,240
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties is lost, and so it's only

220
00:12:54,320 --> 00:12:58,320
Speaker 1: known through Bangs secondary retelling in the nineteen forties. So

221
00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:00,600
Speaker 1: this is a story where not all of the details

222
00:13:00,600 --> 00:13:03,400
Speaker 1: are are solidly established and agreed upon, but we'll do

223
00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,559
Speaker 1: our best, I think to to keep to the likeliest

224
00:13:05,600 --> 00:13:09,040
Speaker 1: broad strokes. So these two guys who arrived in Lubec

225
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:13,160
Speaker 1: in eight They were Charles Fisher, who was a native

226
00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:16,280
Speaker 1: of Martha's Vineyard who had previously been a floor walker

227
00:13:16,320 --> 00:13:19,600
Speaker 1: in a Brooklyn department store. And the other was Reverend

228
00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:23,880
Speaker 1: Prescott Ford Journe, again also originally from Martha's Vineyard, but

229
00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:28,800
Speaker 1: he became a Baptist minister. He was educated at Brown University,

230
00:13:28,920 --> 00:13:32,200
Speaker 1: and he had preached at churches from New England to Florida,

231
00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:36,360
Speaker 1: and he was reportedly given to somewhat utopian thinking, especially

232
00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:41,440
Speaker 1: after reading Edward Bellamy's influential utopian novel Looking Backward Robert

233
00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:43,679
Speaker 1: for you, I've included a picture of Journe again here.

234
00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:45,760
Speaker 1: I was trying to think for a while what he

235
00:13:45,880 --> 00:13:48,560
Speaker 1: looks like, and I realized to me, he looks like

236
00:13:48,640 --> 00:13:53,720
Speaker 1: the brother in Napoleon Dynamite. Do you remember Kip Oh, Yeah,

237
00:13:53,760 --> 00:13:56,160
Speaker 1: I do. I have to to say, when I looked

238
00:13:56,200 --> 00:13:58,640
Speaker 1: at him, my guy kind of a William Sanderson vibe

239
00:13:58,679 --> 00:14:01,960
Speaker 1: you know, oh yeah, I can see that, or at

240
00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:04,800
Speaker 1: least he looks like that would be my first casting choice.

241
00:14:04,840 --> 00:14:07,120
Speaker 1: If I could pick, you know, any actor from any

242
00:14:07,160 --> 00:14:09,840
Speaker 1: any era and sort of they can choose what age

243
00:14:09,880 --> 00:14:12,160
Speaker 1: they they are in the casting, I'd probably go with

244
00:14:12,200 --> 00:14:14,880
Speaker 1: William Sanderson. So he got a little bit of a JF.

245
00:14:14,880 --> 00:14:17,720
Speaker 1: Sebastian kind of thing going on. Yeah, from Blade Runner,

246
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:20,400
Speaker 1: probably his most famous role, but he he's been a

247
00:14:20,400 --> 00:14:21,840
Speaker 1: ton of things. He was in Deadwood, he was on

248
00:14:21,960 --> 00:14:25,880
Speaker 1: True Blood, but older listeners may also remember him from

249
00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:30,200
Speaker 1: New Heart, the old sitcom which he was one of

250
00:14:30,200 --> 00:14:33,080
Speaker 1: the trio Larry, Darrell and Darrell right, Yes, flanked by

251
00:14:33,120 --> 00:14:35,920
Speaker 1: his brother Darrel and his other brothers Darrell Yes. So

252
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:39,440
Speaker 1: these two newcomers to Luebeck, journ Again and Fisher, they

253
00:14:39,720 --> 00:14:44,240
Speaker 1: leased an old gristmill in North Lubec that, in its

254
00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:47,520
Speaker 1: days of grinding grain, had been powered by the tide.

255
00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:49,760
Speaker 1: And I got into this. I didn't really know anything

256
00:14:49,760 --> 00:14:53,560
Speaker 1: about it beforehand, but title mills themselves are a pretty

257
00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:56,880
Speaker 1: interesting subject. They essentially work on the principle of water wheel,

258
00:14:56,960 --> 00:15:01,760
Speaker 1: except instead of using natural tinuous water flow like in

259
00:15:01,840 --> 00:15:05,160
Speaker 1: a river or creek, to power the wheel. They accumulate

260
00:15:05,240 --> 00:15:08,800
Speaker 1: water into a controlled pond or reservoir during high tide

261
00:15:08,840 --> 00:15:11,360
Speaker 1: and then release that water through a gate to drive

262
00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:15,280
Speaker 1: the wheel. Well that's interesting, that makes sense. Yeah, But

263
00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:18,120
Speaker 1: so so this mill in north Lubec used to be

264
00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:20,840
Speaker 1: used to grind grain, and they took it over and

265
00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:24,800
Speaker 1: it would become the first plant of what Journagin and

266
00:15:24,880 --> 00:15:30,360
Speaker 1: Fisher would call the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company. Uh. Now,

267
00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:33,360
Speaker 1: the purchase of this property in Lubec was not the

268
00:15:33,400 --> 00:15:37,400
Speaker 1: beginning of the scam. Jurnagain and Fisher had already scammed

269
00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:42,160
Speaker 1: some investors by staging demonstrations for a number of potential

270
00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:45,880
Speaker 1: investors further south in New England. And the basic scenario

271
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,720
Speaker 1: for these demonstrations went like this. The Reverend Journegan would

272
00:15:49,880 --> 00:15:52,520
Speaker 1: invite the investors to gather on a dock or a

273
00:15:52,560 --> 00:15:56,640
Speaker 1: seaside shed to watch as he prepared this device that

274
00:15:56,680 --> 00:15:59,920
Speaker 1: he was calling the accumulator. And it was some kind

275
00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:04,520
Speaker 1: box into which mercury and sometimes other chemicals were inserted.

276
00:16:04,560 --> 00:16:07,440
Speaker 1: I've read it described in some places as lead lined,

277
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:11,560
Speaker 1: in other places as zinc lined. But apparently you had

278
00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:14,640
Speaker 1: to put mercury into it and in order to to

279
00:16:14,760 --> 00:16:18,359
Speaker 1: assure his investors, he allowed them to supply their own chemicals,

280
00:16:18,360 --> 00:16:21,400
Speaker 1: so it's like a bring your own mercury party. So

281
00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:23,880
Speaker 1: they show up with the quicksilver, put it into the box,

282
00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:27,000
Speaker 1: and then he would apparently apply an electrical current to

283
00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:29,880
Speaker 1: the box via a battery and then lower it down

284
00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:33,200
Speaker 1: into the sea, where at least what he claimed was

285
00:16:33,240 --> 00:16:36,480
Speaker 1: that the seawater could sluice in and that something about

286
00:16:36,560 --> 00:16:41,160
Speaker 1: the way this box worked would accumulate gold content from

287
00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:45,520
Speaker 1: the sea water itself. It would be extracted by the mercury,

288
00:16:45,600 --> 00:16:47,560
Speaker 1: and then I believe that the idea was that it

289
00:16:47,560 --> 00:16:49,960
Speaker 1: would form an amalgam with the mercury, and then the

290
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:52,800
Speaker 1: box would be retrieved some hours later, maybe in the

291
00:16:52,840 --> 00:16:56,960
Speaker 1: morning or something, and voila, there was actually gold inside.

292
00:16:57,040 --> 00:16:59,720
Speaker 1: And so some of these early investors they were astonished,

293
00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:02,480
Speaker 1: and we're like, okay, I'm convinced. Take my money. You know,

294
00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:05,720
Speaker 1: I want to stake in your company now. Before we

295
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:08,879
Speaker 1: pursued the hoax any further and talk about how it worked,

296
00:17:09,160 --> 00:17:11,480
Speaker 1: I think it would be worth asking the question, where

297
00:17:11,520 --> 00:17:15,200
Speaker 1: on Earth did the underlying scientific premise here come from?

298
00:17:15,240 --> 00:17:18,719
Speaker 1: Where Where did he get this idea of extracting gold

299
00:17:18,840 --> 00:17:22,320
Speaker 1: from seawater. Well, it turns out that this actually wasn't

300
00:17:22,359 --> 00:17:25,600
Speaker 1: without scientific precedent, and maybe we should take a quick

301
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:27,400
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back we can talk

302
00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:30,880
Speaker 1: about the idea of of gold and solution throughout the oceans.

303
00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:38,240
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. We're talking about the claim that

304
00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:43,840
Speaker 1: one can simply turn to seawater, collected, accumulated and produce gold.

305
00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:46,760
Speaker 1: Right now, we're focused in this episode on on a

306
00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:50,840
Speaker 1: hoax and swindle in in New England history. But there

307
00:17:50,960 --> 00:17:53,919
Speaker 1: is actually some scientific basis to the idea that gold

308
00:17:53,960 --> 00:17:56,879
Speaker 1: could be extracted from seawater. And for a quick history

309
00:17:57,040 --> 00:17:59,240
Speaker 1: of the awareness of this fact, the idea that gold

310
00:17:59,280 --> 00:18:02,119
Speaker 1: and other precious les could at least potentially be extracted

311
00:18:02,119 --> 00:18:04,600
Speaker 1: from the ocean, I found a good overview in a

312
00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:08,159
Speaker 1: paper by a historian named Brett JA. Stubbs published in

313
00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:12,240
Speaker 1: the journal Australasian Historical Archaeology in two thousand eight, and

314
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:16,920
Speaker 1: the paper is called Delightfully Sunbeams from Cucumbers an early

315
00:18:16,960 --> 00:18:20,960
Speaker 1: twentieth century gold from seawater extraction scheme in northern New

316
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,960
Speaker 1: South Wales. So Stubbs is primarily covering a different gold

317
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:27,560
Speaker 1: from the ocean plot that took place in Australia in

318
00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:31,960
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. But it's introductory section has a

319
00:18:31,960 --> 00:18:34,080
Speaker 1: lot of good stuff here, and the title actually comes

320
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:37,720
Speaker 1: that the sunbeams from cucumbers comes from a passage in

321
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:40,800
Speaker 1: the paperwhere Stubbs mentioned that there was a judge named

322
00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:44,320
Speaker 1: Justice Darling. I think he's referring to Baron Charles Darling

323
00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:47,520
Speaker 1: of England, who at one point compare the quest to

324
00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:51,000
Speaker 1: extract gold from seawater to a scheme in Gulliver's Travels,

325
00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:54,119
Speaker 1: where a character spends eight years developing a process to

326
00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:59,160
Speaker 1: extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Now, I can only assume that

327
00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:03,080
Speaker 1: the part of the idea with getting gold out of

328
00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:06,520
Speaker 1: salt water probably stems from the reality of panning gold

329
00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:09,960
Speaker 1: from mountain streams um and again getting into the idea

330
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:12,800
Speaker 1: that perhaps if if you're not super aware of how

331
00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:15,400
Speaker 1: that process is working, you might well extrapol a well,

332
00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:17,639
Speaker 1: if there's you can get gold out of a stream,

333
00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:19,600
Speaker 1: then look how much ocean there is. There's got to

334
00:19:19,640 --> 00:19:24,280
Speaker 1: be even more golden there. Um. But that doesn't hold

335
00:19:24,359 --> 00:19:26,560
Speaker 1: up when you really look at how panning for gold

336
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:29,240
Speaker 1: works and um, And I feel like a lot of

337
00:19:29,280 --> 00:19:31,119
Speaker 1: a lot of movies and TV. You know, you'll have

338
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:33,280
Speaker 1: panning for Gold and it's not really you don't really

339
00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:36,159
Speaker 1: get a good sense of what's going on. Um. But

340
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:39,000
Speaker 1: I did find that the Cohen Brothers in the film

341
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:42,880
Speaker 1: The Ballot of Buster Scrugs, the sequence about the goal

342
00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:48,080
Speaker 1: about the prospector, titled All Gold Canyon, was actually pretty informative.

343
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:50,280
Speaker 1: You know. It does a nice overview of just how

344
00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,560
Speaker 1: it basically works. You've seen this, right, Joe. This is

345
00:19:53,560 --> 00:19:56,919
Speaker 1: where Tom Waits places the prospector. I have to admit

346
00:19:57,000 --> 00:19:59,800
Speaker 1: I actually haven't finished the movie yet. I started watching

347
00:19:59,800 --> 00:20:02,080
Speaker 1: it one day and I loved it. But it's it's

348
00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:04,000
Speaker 1: one of those happens all too often now in my

349
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:05,840
Speaker 1: life where I start a movie that I like and

350
00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:09,680
Speaker 1: I don't finish it, not for any reason of disinterest. Well,

351
00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:12,840
Speaker 1: I encourage you to press on, certainly for this this

352
00:20:12,840 --> 00:20:16,520
Speaker 1: this particular segment. Uh. It's an anthology film for anyone

353
00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:19,280
Speaker 1: who's not familiar, that takes place in the Old West.

354
00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:21,639
Speaker 1: So in this one, we meet a gold prospector and

355
00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 1: he's out there panning for gold and uh and basically, uh,

356
00:20:24,840 --> 00:20:26,200
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna spoil any of the plot,

357
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:28,159
Speaker 1: but it does a pretty good job of showing you

358
00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:31,119
Speaker 1: that the panning is generally not a lucrative enterprise in

359
00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:33,679
Speaker 1: and of itself, but it's a way to search for

360
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:37,480
Speaker 1: gold deposits in nearby rock that that can be mined.

361
00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:41,199
Speaker 1: So you find some some gold dust showing up in

362
00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:43,960
Speaker 1: this mountain stream, well, then you can use that to

363
00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:47,040
Speaker 1: try and figure out where in this mountain, this area

364
00:20:47,280 --> 00:20:49,560
Speaker 1: you might find a proper vein of gold that you

365
00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:52,720
Speaker 1: can then dig for. But you know, that's one thing,

366
00:20:52,840 --> 00:20:55,400
Speaker 1: But what would the oceanic version of this b right?

367
00:20:55,400 --> 00:20:57,520
Speaker 1: I mean, the fluid dynamics of the situation are far

368
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 1: more complicated. The sea itself is far vast or um.

369
00:21:01,359 --> 00:21:05,080
Speaker 1: It's you know, when you start looking at the facts involved, Uh,

370
00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 1: there's far from a one to one here, right, And

371
00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:11,720
Speaker 1: so the idea of extracting gold from seawater is actually

372
00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:16,119
Speaker 1: based in more of like the misconception version of of

373
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:19,480
Speaker 1: panning for gold, where you're not looking for a vein

374
00:21:19,520 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 1: of gold to exploit, but you are trying to take

375
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:25,719
Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that there is actually gold in

376
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:29,680
Speaker 1: the water itself. It's dissolved in there. There's these little

377
00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:34,160
Speaker 1: tiny molecules of gold throughout the oceans. Um. So, going

378
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 1: back to Brett J. Stubbs paper, beginning in the second

379
00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:39,399
Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century, there were a number of

380
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,479
Speaker 1: chemists and geologists that started to speculate about this. They

381
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,119
Speaker 1: started to say, you know what, I think that you

382
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:49,040
Speaker 1: probably can extract precious metals of all kinds from the sea.

383
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:52,440
Speaker 1: One early example is in the year eighteen sixty six,

384
00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:55,160
Speaker 1: in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement

385
00:21:55,160 --> 00:22:00,440
Speaker 1: of Science, the American chemist Henry Wertz suggested that all

386
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:03,680
Speaker 1: of the water in the world's oceans quote may contain

387
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:07,360
Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty million times more gold

388
00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:10,760
Speaker 1: than the total present wealth of mankind in this metal.

389
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:14,440
Speaker 1: And this was, in Stubbs words, despite its presence in

390
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:18,840
Speaker 1: concentrations that were so small as to be back to words, quote,

391
00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:22,160
Speaker 1: beyond the limits of our present modes of chemical detection,

392
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:25,600
Speaker 1: so words couldn't find it yet, but just reasoned, based

393
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:29,040
Speaker 1: on some other principles of geology and chemistry, that there's

394
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:32,000
Speaker 1: probably a huge amount of precious metal just existing in

395
00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:36,359
Speaker 1: solution throughout the ocean. And Stubbs claims that the first

396
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 1: attempts to actually measure the concentration of gold and seawater.

397
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:44,119
Speaker 1: We're probably carried out by the English chemist Edwards Sanstat,

398
00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:47,560
Speaker 1: who was known for developing techniques in the eighteen sixties

399
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,919
Speaker 1: for the production of purified magnesium. But Stubbs writes, quote

400
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,720
Speaker 1: Sanstat experimented with samples of seawater from the coast of

401
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:59,240
Speaker 1: the Isle of Man and concluded that they contained gold,

402
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:03,239
Speaker 1: but in a proportion certainly less than one grain in

403
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 1: the ton, and a grain here is a unit of

404
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:10,080
Speaker 1: measure that is equivalent to about sixty five milligrams, so

405
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,480
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of it in there. Continuing with Stubbs,

406
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,200
Speaker 1: he went as far as to suggest, however, that one

407
00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 1: of his methods might be practically applied to the exploitation

408
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:23,120
Speaker 1: of the golden seawater, which might be received at high

409
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:27,560
Speaker 1: water in large tanks and emptied at low water. Sanstat

410
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 1: emphasized in eighteen ninety two that the amount of golden

411
00:23:30,720 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 1: sea water was quote far less than one grain per ton.

412
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 1: But basically he's proposing that, well, it might be possible

413
00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: to have some sort of like passive system in place

414
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: that would gradually extract this low quantity of gold from

415
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 1: the ocean, right, I mean there's a paradox involved, right,

416
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 1: So there there were other researchers that soon agreed with Sanstad,

417
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:56,680
Speaker 1: and they emphasized this paradox. In eighteen nine four, there

418
00:23:56,840 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: was a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney

419
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: named Archibald Liversedge who started running experiments and concluded that

420
00:24:03,640 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 1: the density of gold and the ocean was somewhere between

421
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:09,399
Speaker 1: half a grain and one grain per ton of water.

422
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: And remember a grain is about sixty five milligrams. So

423
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,159
Speaker 1: Liversedge noted the irony that while the amount of gold

424
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:20,120
Speaker 1: contained in the whole of the ocean was just enormous,

425
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: I mean far more gold than than humans have access

426
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 1: to now, it was so spread out and so dilute

427
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: that the process of capturing it and isolating it would

428
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:33,760
Speaker 1: probably cost more than the resulting gold was worth. And

429
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,399
Speaker 1: several other researchers in the eighteen nineties and early nine

430
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: hundreds repeated these experiments, sometimes finding even lower concentrations of

431
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: gold than Liver's Edge. But it is clear, at least

432
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: from from this research that there is gold floating in

433
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: solution throughout the oceans, and if there were a cheap

434
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: and efficient way to get it out. You could accessed

435
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 1: vast amounts of riches, but that's a big if. And

436
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:00,120
Speaker 1: Stubbs notes that in the nineties there were many patents

437
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: for processes to extract gold from seawater. However, he notes

438
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: that he could only find records of two gold from

439
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: seawater extraction schemes that were actually put into practice on

440
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:13,720
Speaker 1: a commercial scale, and both of them failed. One was

441
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: at Haling Island in southern England and the other one

442
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: was the main focus of Stubbs paper at Broken Head

443
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: in New South Wales, Australia. I think they were both uh,

444
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,679
Speaker 1: they both began in nineteen o four. And these, in

445
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,719
Speaker 1: contrast to the plot by Journe again and and Fisher,

446
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:33,160
Speaker 1: these were not hoaxes. They were genuine attempts to extract

447
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: the gold by chemical means, but they were never able

448
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 1: to turn a profit, though they were seen as very

449
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: attractive endeavors to a lot of educated people. Apparently no

450
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:46,199
Speaker 1: less a figure than the Nobel Prize winning Scottish chemists

451
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: Sir William Ramsay, who was He was instrumental in the

452
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: discovery and isolation of the noble gases. I think that's

453
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: what he got his Nobel Prize for um. He was

454
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:57,199
Speaker 1: convinced that the plant on Haling Island, the one in

455
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,639
Speaker 1: southern England, was going to be a success, but within

456
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: less than two years of its founding, the company operating

457
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: it had folded and the scheme in New South Wales

458
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: involved it involved sort of what saun Stat was saying,

459
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:14,479
Speaker 1: the extraction of seawater up to a reservoir where it

460
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:16,959
Speaker 1: was treated on the way to the reservoir with lime

461
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,959
Speaker 1: and iron oxide, and then it was allowed to settle

462
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,719
Speaker 1: into a sludge while the water was drawn off at

463
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: the top, and then the sludge was to be treated

464
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: with cyanide to extract the gold. And apparently the Australian

465
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: plants ceased operation very soon after it started, possibly due

466
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: to storm damage, but there's no evidence that it ever

467
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: would have been able to turn a profit. But anyway,

468
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: this all brings me back to that interesting comparison by

469
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: Judge Darling the idea of sunbeams from cucumbers, because a

470
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 1: similar impracticality is actually involved. Cucumbers actually are in a

471
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: sense made out of sunbeams. Right. The sunlight feeds energy

472
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 1: into the plant, which is used to manufacture chemical energy

473
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: in the form of sugars and other tissue use. And

474
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: the same energy that came from the sun is actually

475
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: still locked up inside the flesh of the cucumber, but

476
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 1: in a different form, and it would take a very

477
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:13,640
Speaker 1: lossy conversion process to turn that chemical energy back into light.

478
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: And as Stubbs recounts that other chemists in the early

479
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: twentieth century examined the same problem trying to get precious metals,

480
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,200
Speaker 1: mainly gold, out of sea water, and they could never

481
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 1: find a way to make the process of getting the

482
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 1: gold out cost effective. You could get the gold out,

483
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: but the process was so expensive and so inefficient that

484
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: the gold it produced was never enough to to cause

485
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: you to break even. Uh. And to quote from Stubbs quote,

486
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,400
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize winning chemist Fritz Haber, who later developed

487
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: his own method for extracting gold from seawater, came to

488
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the quantities were so small and the

489
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: expense so great that the process could never be made profitable. Yeah.

490
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:56,680
Speaker 1: Fritz Haber, by the way, gave us the haber Bosch

491
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: process method he used in industry to synthesize ammonia from

492
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: nydrogen gas and hydrogen gas. He's also sometimes referred to

493
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: as the father of chemical warfare for his work on

494
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,199
Speaker 1: weaponized chlorine gas. Yeah, apparently a lot of his interest

495
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: in extracting gold from seawater, back before he realized that

496
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: it couldn't turn a profit, was was related to making

497
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: money to help Germany payback it's war debt from World

498
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: War One. So back to the Luebeck hoax. So where

499
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:29,360
Speaker 1: did Joern again get his idea to extract gold from seawater? Remember,

500
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: some sources alleged that the idea came to him in

501
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: a dream or a heavenly vision. I think he claimed

502
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 1: that at some point, and that's the quote I read

503
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: at the top of the episode from the Hartford Current.

504
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: But he but others alleged that this was not a dream,

505
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: it did not come in a vision. That the journey

506
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: again basically read about the research of Edward sonstat and

507
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 1: then he thought, hey, what if I could do that?

508
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 1: And it's also worth pointing out where this scheme occurs

509
00:28:57,080 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: in history. So this is going to be in the

510
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: mid to late eighteen nineties, which is concurrent with the

511
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: Klondike gold rush in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. So

512
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 1: gold fever was in the air. But in the words

513
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: of Carrie Bangs quote, it did indeed seem less arduous

514
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: to get the gold from the water than from the

515
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: Alaskan fields. And as someone later pointed out, it was

516
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: even more easy to pick the gold from the pockets

517
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 1: of stockholders than from either of these places. That's as

518
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: a solid inside and a solid burn there. So, beginning

519
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: in October of eighteen nine seven, Journegin and Fisher operated

520
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 1: their business in North Lubec, eventually leasing multiple locations for

521
00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: plants plants and quotes here you should hear me say,

522
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: And they hired over a hundred workers. They gathered money

523
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: from lots of eager investors throughout New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

524
00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: Apparently they authored a prospectus about how they planned to

525
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: extract money from the ocean that was somewhat successful in

526
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: in getting investors. And at these plants they operated the

527
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: so called accumulators that supposedly worked on the same principal

528
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: journe again had demonstrated before, but with different specifications. To

529
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 1: quote from Bangs again in a January twentie nine article

530
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: describing them, quote, these boxes were made in part of

531
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: copper and containing a battery, mercury, and unknown chemicals. It

532
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: is recorded that one of the first accumulators that was

533
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: used for demonstration purposes was lined with lead and was

534
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: not much larger than a plate. The lead lining proved

535
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: to be a bad idea, as the mercury could easily

536
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: eat its way through this metal. Now we alluded to

537
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: the fact earlier that journ again, unlike some of these

538
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: other people who filed for patents, Journegan did not want

539
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: to share his method. He he kept secret whatever his

540
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: method for getting the gold out of the sea water was,

541
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 1: and with hindsight, the reason for that is obvious. Bangs

542
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: reports that by February fIF there were about a hundred

543
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: of these accumulators operating under the war for the plant location,

544
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: and more were on the way. Exactly how often these

545
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: accumulators were checked for gold, and how the gold got

546
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: into them when it was found, or or where the

547
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: gold came from in general, is still a matter of

548
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: some dispute, but a number of sources from the Times

549
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:19,120
Speaker 1: say that for a lot of these demonstrations there was

550
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: a sleight of hand involving pre purchased gold either above

551
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: water or below, and especially with like the earlier demonstrations

552
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: that had taken place beforehand with some of the first investors.

553
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: The idea is that while Joern again was up on

554
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: the dock doing his show, lowering the accumulator and and

555
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: entertaining the possible investors, his partner, Charles Fisher, was allegedly

556
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 1: a skilled diver in possession of a diving suit. Yeah,

557
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: and it has been widely suggested that during at least

558
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:54,040
Speaker 1: some of these early demonstrations, Fisher would sneak underwater via

559
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: a guideline to the side of the accumulator in his

560
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:01,360
Speaker 1: diving suit and then salt the box boxes with gold

561
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,200
Speaker 1: or silver. And then later once they had actually established

562
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: these plants and they had the accumulators working in the

563
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: mill Pond reservoir at this point, I think it's more

564
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: murky whether Fisher would actually need to go underwater to

565
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: sault them, or whether you could just produce the gold,

566
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: you know, generally at the plant later and say it

567
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: came out of the accumulators. It's not exactly clear what

568
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: always was happening there, but they did have gold, and

569
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: it appeared this gold was just bought like it was

570
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: sourced from jewelry and other stuff, and and then collected

571
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: on the factory premises as if it had come out

572
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: of the accumulators. And then the production of this gold

573
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: from the accumulator supposedly was used to prove to more

574
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: investors that they should give even more money. Now, apparently

575
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:50,600
Speaker 1: the local press was very optimistic and positive about Journe

576
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: again and Fisher and the project as a whole. I

577
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: found a page hosted by the main Memory network that

578
00:32:56,640 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 1: quotes a Lubeck Herold article from saying, the presence of

579
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: these people is not only desirable for the amount of

580
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: money that they will bring into the town, but we

581
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 1: should welcome them for their social qualities. The officers of

582
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: the company or earnest Christian gentlemen, and many of their

583
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: employees are Christians. We wish them all the success in

584
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: their undertaking, and hope that they will take millions of

585
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: dollars from the old pass Uma quote bay, and we

586
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: believe they will. With quantities of gold in the salt water,

587
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 1: there is little need of a trip to Alaska. So

588
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 1: again the idea of like Klondike sort of being in

589
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 1: the back of everybody's mind, And I wonder in what

590
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: way that may actually make a hoax or or a

591
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: scam like this more appealing if there's like if it's

592
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: appealing to something that you could get in another way,

593
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: but it would be much harder. Again, it comes back

594
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: to too good to be true. It's the shortcut. It's there.

595
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 1: They're they're selling the shortcut here, which of course doesn't

596
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: pan out. Yeah, so there is a question of why

597
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: did Jernigan choose Lubec for the side of the plants

598
00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 1: or burn Again and Fisher together. I guess well. Journegan

599
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: claimed that it had to do with things like that

600
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: extremely high title range that we were talking about earlier

601
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:11,880
Speaker 1: in the episode, but I've also speculated that he was

602
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: basically just trying to get out of range of easy

603
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: investigation by his investors and stakeholders, who were mostly further

604
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: south in New England. And it's worth noting that, unlike

605
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: several other inventors of the eighteen nineties, again, Journagin did

606
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 1: not patent his process. He did not take out a

607
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: patent on whatever he was doing to supposedly extract gold

608
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: from the ocean. Instead, he kept it entirely secret. And

609
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 1: again it's now obvious why. So the scam went on

610
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: for a while, but eventually, in the summer of eighteen

611
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,320
Speaker 1: so the year following, when they arrived in Lubeck, after

612
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 1: they had gathered by some estimates, around a million dollars

613
00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 1: in total from investors, but just before the scheme was

614
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: fully exposed and they were caught, Journ again and Fisher

615
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: skip town, taking their investors money with them. And even

616
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: worse than that, there there were hundreds of workers who

617
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: had been attracted to Lubec to work for the company

618
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: who were suddenly just left out of work. Apparently, Journ

619
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: again fled to Europe with his family, claiming that he

620
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: himself had been duped by Fisher. That seems kind of unlikely.

621
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: Fisher just disappeared entirely, and Journegan eventually returned some of

622
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 1: the money that he stole. He returned some of it

623
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: to to his investors. Reportedly, they made about thirty six

624
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar back from their investment, and Journegan

625
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: went on to become a school teacher in the Philippines.

626
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 1: But I'm still thinking about the question I opened with

627
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: that you brought up just a second ago. You know,

628
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing when someone is selling you on

629
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 1: a recognizable absurgity, like a pyramid scheme or magic beings

630
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: or whatever. But in a way, developing scientific frontiers can

631
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: make a magic being type swindle seem more possible because

632
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:56,919
Speaker 1: they emphasized the unarguable fact that we don't always really

633
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 1: know what's possible. You know, it wasn't just that a

634
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: bunch of gullible investors from New York and New England

635
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: got taken in by a free money scam. Remember that

636
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:08,760
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier from the Stubs paper. The Nobel Prize

637
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,920
Speaker 1: winning chemists Sir William Ramsey was at least for a

638
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: time inclined to believe that a gold from the sea

639
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: experiment at Haling Island in southern England could be leveraged

640
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: into a profitable enterprise. Now, of course, further testing would

641
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 1: prove this wasn't the case. But how exactly would people

642
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: have known that this would never work at this point

643
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: in history, you know, chemistry and mineral extraction. I feel

644
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: like they must have seemed like a kind of vast,

645
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: untapped wilderness of infinite possibility. Yeah, yeah, And and again

646
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: I come back to the idea that it it feels

647
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 1: so much like a technological amplification of gold panning. And

648
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: if gold panning is possible without modern technology, then you know,

649
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: might the same sort of thing be possible on a

650
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:53,399
Speaker 1: grander scale in the sea given advances in technology. I mean,

651
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: I feel like the same sort of uh, you know,

652
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: basic line of thinking you know easily applies to things today,

653
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: it could apply to to technology today. Yeah, if if

654
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,760
Speaker 1: you don't understand the underlying principles, chemistry looks like magic.

655
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: I mean, just to remind you again, like the cyanide

656
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:13,760
Speaker 1: extraction process for gold that probably would in some sense work.

657
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: It just wouldn't work well enough to make a profit.

658
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 1: But anyway, maybe we should take another break and then

659
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: when we come back we can talk more about the geology, chemistry,

660
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:31,400
Speaker 1: and ideology of gold. Alright, we're back. So, uh, I

661
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: think we've touched on this a little bit on the

662
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:34,880
Speaker 1: show before, but I was thinking about the idea of

663
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: where gold actually comes from. You know, thinking about gold

664
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: existing dissolved throughout the oceans makes you wonder about questions

665
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: like this because gold is a relatively rare element compared

666
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: to the commonplaces of you know, hydrogen, oxygen and iron

667
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: and all that. But obviously veins of it can be

668
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:54,359
Speaker 1: found in Earth's crust and in the ocean as well.

669
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: So where does gold actually come from? Well, the atomic

670
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: origin of gold, like what makes the old atoms. There's

671
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 1: still some uncertainty here, but the evidence indicates that gold

672
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: is produced an extremely violent stellar phenomena. Possibly it was.

673
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:12,239
Speaker 1: It used to be thought through something known as the

674
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: r process of a supernova, you know, this rapid neutron capture.

675
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: More recently, I've seen uh studies suggesting it's probably more

676
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: likely through the collision of neutron stars. So think about

677
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: that next time. You're just looking at a piece of

678
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: gold leaf for gold, Yeah, you're you're drinking the you know,

679
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:33,560
Speaker 1: the gold leaf liquer or whatever it is gold. Yeah, yeah,

680
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: it didn't. Didn't you ever know people who drank that stuff?

681
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: I did. I knew someone who drank it exclusively. Yeah, yeah, wow, exclusively.

682
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 1: That's I mean the luxury. I'm not saying they drank

683
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: it only like it was their only liquid, but I

684
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: think it was like the only there was there. It

685
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: was their go to alcohol. Um wow, which I mean,

686
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: it's sparkly, it's going it kind of under. It's a

687
00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: perfect example of gold fascination, Like, like so much of

688
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: our fascination with gold is based on the fact that

689
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 1: it it looks neat, even if it doesn't actually contribute

690
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 1: to the um you know, effectiveness of a tool or

691
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,560
Speaker 1: a weapon, etcetera. It's really only when you get into,

692
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: you know, more into the modern technological world where you

693
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: find gold is having a lot more function as opposed

694
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:24,359
Speaker 1: to just pure you know, shiny lure. Right right, Uh, well,

695
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: you know what now that I'm sort of questioning because

696
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:28,120
Speaker 1: I was about to say, you know, like gold is

697
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: so amazing because it comes from the collision of neutron

698
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: stars probably or whatever it is. It comes from very

699
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,440
Speaker 1: violent stellar phenomena that are at levels of magnitude and

700
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:40,879
Speaker 1: power that you can't even comprehend. But on the other hand,

701
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: I mean, tons of elements are like that. In fact,

702
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:46,320
Speaker 1: the the actual atomic origin of all elements is mind

703
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: boggling when you think about it. It's just that, like,

704
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 1: this is mind boggling in this particular way. But gold

705
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: is metal that looks like the sun, and therefore it

706
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 1: gets it gets a privileged status, I guess so. But

707
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 1: then there's another question actually beyond that. So okay that obviously,

708
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,279
Speaker 1: you know, many heavy elements that are dispersed throughout the

709
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: galaxy are created by violent stellar phenomenon supernovae or or

710
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 1: the collision of neutron stars, things like that. But then

711
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,320
Speaker 1: how does it get to Earth? So this is really

712
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:17,879
Speaker 1: interesting there and there again this is another area where

713
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: we don't have all the answers and they're you know,

714
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 1: some competing hypothesis to consider here. But the late Veneer

715
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: hypothesis argues that gold and other specific materials were added

716
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: to the Earth's crust roughly three point eight billion years

717
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: ago via a bombardment of iridium rich meteorites known as chondrites.

718
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 1: So this is the idea emerged in the early nineteen

719
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: seventies following analysis of lunar rocks and the lack of

720
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: gold and iridium in uh the lunar mantle. They found

721
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: they found it on a lunar surface. However, and we

722
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: have we have to remember that the surface of the

723
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:59,440
Speaker 1: Moon is ancient lunar highland rocks returned by Apollo sixteen

724
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: or roughly four billion years old. A rock from Apollo

725
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 1: seventeen was found to be four point five billion years old.

726
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: To put all of that in perspective, the Solar system

727
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: itself is thought to be roughly uh four point uh

728
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: five sixty eight billion years old, so some of these

729
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: lunar rocks are as old as our solar system itself basically.

730
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: And you can also look at the cratering. More craters

731
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 1: mean geologically older surfaces. Fewer craters as with Earth indicates

732
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: a geologically younger surface, right, because the Earth is geologically active,

733
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 1: so it's constantly repaving its own surface in a way

734
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: that the Moon is not. Correct. Yeah, So the hypothesis

735
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: here is that this golden bombardment um was churned up

736
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: and incorporated into the Earth's mantle, while it only impacted

737
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: the surface layer of the Moon. Interesting, so in a sense,

738
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:54,520
Speaker 1: if you follow that hypothesis, you could say, okay, well

739
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: that means gold is kind of alien. You know, it's

740
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: from another world. It's it's it's extraterrestrial um. But but

741
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 1: then we have some some other ideas out there as well.

742
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: For instance, there's the rival magma ocean hypothesis, which argues

743
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: that the gold was here all along. And here's how

744
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: William M. Kramer explained it in the BBC News article

745
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: does gold come from outer space? From quote all the

746
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: gold on Earth's crust or the overwhelming majority of it

747
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,720
Speaker 1: was here on Earth all along. Most of it certainly

748
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: alloyed with iron and migrated to the Earth's core, but

749
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: a significant proportion, perhaps point dissolved into a seven dred

750
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: kilometer deep magma ocean within the Earth's outer mantle. Later,

751
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 1: the gold was brought back up to the crust by

752
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: volcanic action. This is the stuff we wear around our

753
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: necks and on our fingers today. WHOA, Okay, so it's

754
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: either So if one of these hypotheses is correct, it's

755
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 1: either from a bombardment from space or an eruption of

756
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: volcanoes basically. But then again, it's it's kind of like

757
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: everything is due to violence in space, right if you

758
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:03,280
Speaker 1: back far enough in terms of the history of our planet, etcetera.

759
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's ultimately we're dealing with with

760
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: processes and events on a scale so far beyond the

761
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: you know, the limits of the human lifetime and human

762
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: experience that it's all, uh, it's all the machinations of

763
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,320
Speaker 1: the gods. Right, there are no bundane atoms. All atoms

764
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 1: are beautiful, yeah, but they're not all equally valuable. So

765
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: people did continue the search for gold in the ocean

766
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: after the examples we've already talked about. Well, one of

767
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 1: the questions I was wondering about is, okay, have have

768
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 1: modern methods changed our picture at all of whether there

769
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: is really gold in the ocean? Like worse On stat

770
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:43,439
Speaker 1: and the other nineteenth century chemists correct, is the really

771
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: gold dissolved in the ocean? And the answer is yes,

772
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: But modern methods revealed that there's probably even less of

773
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:54,320
Speaker 1: it than previously estimated. According to some materials I was

774
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: reading by the n O A A, there there is

775
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,760
Speaker 1: gold in seawater, but it's actually difficult to measure exactly

776
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 1: how much, and it does seem to vary in different

777
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: parts of the ocean. But but they linked to one

778
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: study using modern methods that was published in nineteen nine

779
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:13,760
Speaker 1: by K. Kennison, Faulkner and J. M. Edmond called Golden

780
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: Seawater in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and

781
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: these authors found quote, the measured concentrations of gold in

782
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are within a factor of

783
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:28,840
Speaker 1: two to three of recently reported values in Pacific waters,

784
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: and nearly three orders of magnitude less than reported in

785
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: the literature prior to nineteen eight, indicating contamination problems with

786
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: the earlier data, and apparently there are places that have

787
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 1: more gold in the water than other places. They point

788
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 1: out Mediterranean deep waters apparently have higher concentrations, as do

789
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 1: fluids surrounding hydrothermal vents, which is interesting. But the in O. A. A.

790
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: Summarizes the findings of this paper to say that there

791
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,319
Speaker 1: is quote only about one gram of gold old for

792
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: every one hundred million metric tons of ocean water in

793
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and North Pacific. So that's a lot of

794
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:10,160
Speaker 1: water you'd have to turn through to get a graham

795
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 1: of gold. Yeah, you'd need to take a lot of patients, right,

796
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 1: and a lot of energy. I mean, ultimately your power

797
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: bill would be way more than you could sell the gold.

798
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:24,240
Speaker 1: For just one more historical instance, I came across of

799
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: of people trying to turn gold or claiming that they

800
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:29,360
Speaker 1: would be able to to turn the ocean into gold.

801
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: There was an article in The New York Times in

802
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 1: um on March seven, nineteen thirty four by William L.

803
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: Lawrence called Tapping Ocean's gold treasure predicted as coming in decade,

804
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: which I think is a particularly awful title. I don't

805
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:48,319
Speaker 1: know how you could have phrase something that bad. That's

806
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: it's like four layers of passive voice or something. Um

807
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,839
Speaker 1: But so here's a brief sketch of the article. What

808
00:45:55,920 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 1: was then the Ethel Dow Chemical Company, which was a

809
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: joint venture of the Ethel Company in the Dow Chemical Company.

810
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,919
Speaker 1: They successfully deployed a plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, which

811
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: was able to extract bro mean from seawater, and based

812
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 1: on the principles that were in operation at this plant,

813
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: a couple of prominent chemists predicted at the nineteen thirty

814
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 1: four Annual Convention of the American Chemical Society that within

815
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: the next ten years they would be able to extract quote,

816
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: the three quadrillion dollar treasure in pure gold known to

817
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 1: exist in very dilute form in the waters of the

818
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 1: Seven Seas. Quadrillion dollar treasure. That can you imagine? That

819
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:48,360
Speaker 1: is like an actual official business plan where they're like,

820
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: and and then we know over the next you know,

821
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: a few years, we're gonna make three quadrillion dollars. Our

822
00:46:55,320 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: valuation of our company is elevenies zillion dollars. Oh, that's great,

823
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: but interesting historical coincidence here. Who were the chemists who

824
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 1: made this prediction. Well, so two of them were dal

825
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: Chemical guys Willard H. Dow and Leroy C. Stewart, but

826
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,919
Speaker 1: both of dal Chemical. But the other one who made

827
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: this prediction at this meeting in was none other than

828
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: Thomas Midgeley, who was at the time VP of the

829
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:26,720
Speaker 1: Ethel Corporation and who was a brilliant chemists no doubt,

830
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 1: but who is now probably more famous for developing two

831
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: major technologies leaded gasoline and chlora flora carbon's that's both

832
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:42,239
Speaker 1: quite a quite a reson. So yeah. Actually, the name

833
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,800
Speaker 1: of the company Midgeley was president of at the time

834
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:48,280
Speaker 1: that the Ethel Company, was the brand name for tetra

835
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: ethyl led gasoline, which midsually developed as an anti knocking agent.

836
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: So the idea was that the additive, the the added

837
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 1: lead content, would make the gasoline burn more evenly. Unfortunately,

838
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,760
Speaker 1: the burning of leaded gasoline just blankets the environment and lead,

839
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 1: which which is just a bad thing to do in

840
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,480
Speaker 1: every imaginable way. Then, on top of that, he also

841
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: developed free on which probably would have seemed more harmless

842
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 1: at the time. This was the first of the commercial CFCs,

843
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: and this was in the search for a non toxic refrigerant.

844
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:23,320
Speaker 1: Of course, free on was very successful until the CFC

845
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: started to get into the upper atmosphere, and then they

846
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:28,840
Speaker 1: began to eat away at the planets ozone layer. So

847
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,239
Speaker 1: I was reading the words of an environmental historian named J. R.

848
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: McNeil in a two thousand and one book where he writes,

849
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 1: quote Midgely, the same research chemists who figured out that

850
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:42,799
Speaker 1: lead would enhance echine performance had more impact on the

851
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:48,719
Speaker 1: atmosphere than any single other organism in Earth history. So yeah,

852
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: so he's one of the guys saying three quadrillion dollars

853
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 1: or whatever, um. But anyway, so these guys the the

854
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: American Chemical Society meeting in thirty four were arguing, look,

855
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:03,360
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be impossible to profitably extract

856
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: bromine from seawater, but now we've climbed that hill. So

857
00:49:07,120 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 1: other substances like gold and silver and radium, they're just

858
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: next in line. We just need to refine our methods.

859
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: But of course it never happened. But this makes sense, right.

860
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: It's like, as technology continues to advance, we kind of

861
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,719
Speaker 1: keep making the same mistakes, right, We keep coming back

862
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: to far fetched ideas from the past and asking yourselves. Well,

863
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: is it time? Is it now? Yeah? I guess. I

864
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:33,320
Speaker 1: mean others keep bringing this idea up basically every decade.

865
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 1: It seems like I never saw this personally, but I

866
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: was reading that apparently there was a guy on that

867
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: TV show Shark Tank. I was reading about this in

868
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:45,759
Speaker 1: an Atlas Obscure article about getting gold from seawater by

869
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: Eric Grundhauser, and he mentioned so on the show Shark Tank.

870
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: There's a guy who proposed a clean energy device that

871
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 1: he just claimed as a byproduct would refine gold from

872
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:59,400
Speaker 1: the ocean. And I do not think he won the

873
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 1: prize money or whatever. But there's another way in which

874
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: people are still in a practical sense looking to the

875
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: oceans for mineral wealth and precious metals, Because while it

876
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:13,480
Speaker 1: might not actually be economically practical to capture gold and

877
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: other precious metals from the sea water itself, the ocean

878
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,880
Speaker 1: does contain accessible mineral riches in other ways, Like what

879
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:25,240
Speaker 1: about the idea of ocean floor mining. Yeah, and indeed

880
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,319
Speaker 1: there is a high potential for sea floor mining, at

881
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: least in the future. This is again another area where

882
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: the technology is not quite there to the point where

883
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: it would be. Um, you know, actually profitable to go

884
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: after it. But technology continues to advance, as does um

885
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:44,399
Speaker 1: you know that the demand for some of these substances,

886
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: but yeah, particularly gold and other metals. Um. However, the

887
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,840
Speaker 1: practice comes with severe risks for deep sea ecosystems that

888
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 1: were either beginning, only beginning to understand, or in many

889
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: cases are still shrouded in mystery or just unknown to us.

890
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:01,799
Speaker 1: I have to refer back to we've talked about the

891
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 1: Moon in this episode, and we've talked about the deep ocean. Uh,

892
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 1: as we've pointed out before, you know, we ultimately know

893
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 1: more about the surface details of the Moon than we

894
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:14,319
Speaker 1: know about the depths of Earth's own ocean. You know,

895
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 1: I specifically remember in our conversation with Diva aim On

896
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: here on the show The Marine Biologists too. That was

897
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 1: a great episode, I thought, But she she was warning

898
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 1: specifically about the potential dangers of deep sea mining to

899
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 1: underwater ecosystems. Yeah, because a lot of it revolves around

900
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: hydrothermal vents, which we already mentioned in passing in the

901
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: episode here. Now, if you've watched your share of nature documentaries,

902
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:41,839
Speaker 1: which I imagined a lot of our listeners have, you've

903
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: likely seen footage, incredible footage of these amazing places where

904
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 1: chimney shaped black smokers, you know, boil the seawater and

905
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: around which entire ecosystems of strange creatures thrive in the darkness,

906
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: including the so called hof crab, which are you know,

907
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: actually not crabs. They're the deep seas watt lobsters. But

908
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: they're they're very weird looking. The whole environment is weird looking.

909
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: It's it's it's this alien seeming world that has actually

910
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 1: helped us better imagine how life might thrive in a

911
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,919
Speaker 1: truly alien environment, perhaps in a dark or hidden ocean somewhere. Yeah,

912
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: like if we were ever to discover that there were

913
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: life on say Jupiter's moon Europa, understanding life around hydrothermal

914
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,840
Speaker 1: vents on Earth might be a good guide to understand

915
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: what's possible on another moon or planetary body like that. Yeah. So,

916
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:34,359
Speaker 1: so these these sites are are very impressive, and they're

917
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:36,560
Speaker 1: a great there's a great deal of scientific interest in

918
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 1: what's going on there. But these vent sites also produce

919
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 1: massive sulfide deposits rich in metals or sea floor. Massive

920
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:50,600
Speaker 1: sulfide deposits are sms. So here a high pressure superheated

921
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 1: fluids escape through cracks and they mix with the cold

922
00:52:53,600 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: sea water, and when this happens, minerals form and fall

923
00:52:56,719 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: to the sea floor. And these include high concentrations of copper, gold, silver, zinc,

924
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: and lead. Now on Earth's surface, we have massive sulfide

925
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:09,800
Speaker 1: deposits due to volcanic action, and these are major sources

926
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,480
Speaker 1: of copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold on the surface. Uh.

927
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: But so these sites would would seem to offer the

928
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: same riches and uh, Again, the technology is not quite

929
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 1: there to the point where we could actually go after

930
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,239
Speaker 1: these resources in a way that would be profitable, like

931
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: completely putting aside any environmental concerns. Like it just hasn't

932
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,280
Speaker 1: crossed that threshold yet, but there's a lot of concern

933
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: that it is about to. And sites in the Pacific

934
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 1: are of our our special interest because they've been proven

935
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: to produce high concentrations of the desired metals, plus their

936
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:45,919
Speaker 1: shallower than other sites and therefore easier to potentially reach

937
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: and harvest, like these are going to be the first

938
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: places that people go after. Also, these sites are generally

939
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: under the under the domain of Pacific nations, where there

940
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: may there might not be sufficient governance or management in

941
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,879
Speaker 1: place yet for such endeavors. I mean that on top

942
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: of just the relative newness of the entire prospect of

943
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:09,320
Speaker 1: deep sea mining. So there are organizations involved in efforts

944
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: to protect these areas or in other cases like see

945
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: that any mining efforts there are done in a way

946
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:18,880
Speaker 1: that doesn't just decimate the environment. You mentioned our interview

947
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: with dp C biologists and ocean advocate Diva amon Uh,

948
00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: and she specifically pointed out the work of the Deep

949
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: Sea Conservation Coalition, which everyone can learn about at Save

950
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:34,399
Speaker 1: the High Seas dot org. They point out that these

951
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: minerals have thus far proven too difficult to reach, too expensive,

952
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 1: and the technology to do it effectively regardless of environmental

953
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:44,839
Speaker 1: concerns isn't quite there yet. But the concern here again

954
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:47,799
Speaker 1: is that the technology will get there. Major players are

955
00:54:47,800 --> 00:54:51,239
Speaker 1: already involved with their eyes on the deep sea bed

956
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: mining riches, and quote it's only very recently as technological

957
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:58,760
Speaker 1: advancement has been matched by escalating commodity prices in demand

958
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 1: that the highly spec old of practice has begun to

959
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:05,839
Speaker 1: be considered economically viable by some companies. So work needs

960
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: to be done now to protect these environments. You know,

961
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: to make sure that that there there are laws in place, um,

962
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of governance there and it's not

963
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:16,720
Speaker 1: just a free for all. Um. Again, I highly recommend

964
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:18,879
Speaker 1: visiting Save the High Seas dot org to learn more

965
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: and also consider checking out our chat with Diva Amon

966
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: from last year. Yeah. Absolutely, that was a good one.

967
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:28,279
Speaker 1: And I actually have one more thing that that came

968
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 1: up in the research I'd like to to to bring

969
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:32,760
Speaker 1: out here. Briefly, We've we've spoken about all these different

970
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:35,360
Speaker 1: ways of like trying to coax the gold out of

971
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: its hiding place, right, how to trick it out of

972
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:42,280
Speaker 1: the ocean or out of the deep sea floor, et cetera,

973
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:45,839
Speaker 1: or even out of the streams and the mountains. So

974
00:55:46,400 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: there's a there's an additional idea that I came across

975
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: here called phyto mining, And basically the premise here is

976
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:56,319
Speaker 1: that some plants have the ability to absorb minerals through

977
00:55:56,320 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 1: their roots and concentrate metals such as nickel, uh cadmium,

978
00:56:02,160 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: and zinc. These plants are hyper accumulators. Uh. Now, there

979
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:10,799
Speaker 1: are no gold hyper accumulators because gold doesn't dissolve and

980
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:14,920
Speaker 1: water all that easily, but it can seemingly be forced

981
00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:17,840
Speaker 1: to do so. So there's this technique that was proposed

982
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:22,240
Speaker 1: by Chris Anderson, environmental geochemist at Massi University in New Zealand,

983
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:26,200
Speaker 1: and his idea was to plant fast growing leafy plants

984
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:30,760
Speaker 1: like mustard plants on soil containing gold, such as soil

985
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: found near gold mines, that sort of thing. When the

986
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: plants reach their full height, you treat the soil to

987
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:39,840
Speaker 1: make the gold more soluble. Then the plant will absorb

988
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: the gold up into its biomass, and then you harvest it. Huh. Interesting. Now,

989
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,280
Speaker 1: the harvesting apparently is more difficult than it sounds, because

990
00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:52,759
Speaker 1: you can't just burn the plant and then like get

991
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 1: picked the gold out of the ash because gold is

992
00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:57,959
Speaker 1: gonna gonna escape in the smoke via the ash. So

993
00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 1: that instead you'd have to use a chemical process involving

994
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,839
Speaker 1: like strong acids. And the problem is that these might

995
00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 1: be too environmentally risky in and of themselves. Uh. Anderson's

996
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,600
Speaker 1: idea is that perhaps you could use this alongside the

997
00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:15,560
Speaker 1: just the basic absorption of soul contaminants, so you would

998
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: be planting, uh these plants manipulating the soil in a

999
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,600
Speaker 1: way so that they're removing soil containments and as a byproduct,

1000
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:27,120
Speaker 1: removing gold as well. That's interesting. I don't think I've

1001
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: ever even heard of this possibility. This is this is

1002
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:32,040
Speaker 1: brand new to me. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look

1003
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:33,960
Speaker 1: like there's been a ton of work on it, but

1004
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 1: there has. There are some other papers about it out there,

1005
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: and some of them are I was looking at another

1006
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 1: one as well that seemed to frame it as a

1007
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 1: more like environmentally stable solution. But um, but I don't know.

1008
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: The other source I was looking at was saying that,

1009
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 1: you know, you have to consider these acids that are

1010
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 1: used to treat the soil so uh So, I don't

1011
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:59,400
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. I guess is it's it's perfect

1012
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: for someone to scam people right now, right. Yes, So

1013
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 1: if you want to become the next Reverend Prescott forward

1014
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:08,640
Speaker 1: journey again, you just need to come up with a

1015
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: good story about a vision of plants that you had

1016
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: while asleep in a train car. And then you find

1017
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 1: a suitable small town and you say, I'm going to

1018
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:22,280
Speaker 1: make mustard greens into gold. Yeah. I can see it now.

1019
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:24,520
Speaker 1: I think it would make for a great Um. I

1020
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:27,440
Speaker 1: don't know, it could be a great plot element in

1021
00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 1: the story. For sure, it would be a good HBO show. Yeah,

1022
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 1: there's a there's actually there's a Live Science article about

1023
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 1: this title, There's Gold and in Our Plants by Lindsay

1024
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: Kunkle And this was from well, I'm immediately thinking of Pipper.

1025
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, from Final Sacrifice. Yes, the Final Sacrifice

1026
00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:54,080
Speaker 1: famously um riffed on Mystery Science Theater three thousand digs.

1027
00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 1: So anyway, I don't know about gold from plants or

1028
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: certainly I don't know about about finding the lost city

1029
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:06,080
Speaker 1: of Zeos uh here uh in Canada. But but certainly

1030
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 1: I think we have explored the possibility of finding hidden

1031
00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 1: gold in the ocean. Um. Technically yes, but with some

1032
00:59:18,600 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: with some definite asterisk is technically yes, practically no. Right,

1033
00:59:23,760 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: if somebody comes to you with a with a get

1034
00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: rich quick scheme about it, you should, uh you should

1035
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:34,000
Speaker 1: have a chemist friend look into it first. Exactly all right, Uh, well,

1036
00:59:34,040 --> 00:59:36,080
Speaker 1: we'll go in and close the episode out right there.

1037
00:59:36,240 --> 00:59:39,440
Speaker 1: But we'd love to hear from everyone about this topic. Uh. Certainly,

1038
00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:41,439
Speaker 1: if you have any connection to some of the parts

1039
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: of the world that we discussed here, and if you

1040
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 1: want to support the show, you can find us wherever

1041
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 1: you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.

1042
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: Just makes your rate, review and subscribe huge, Thanks as

1043
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1044
00:59:56,000 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1045
00:59:57,600 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic

1046
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:02,520
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

1047
01:00:02,600 --> 01:00:05,360
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

1048
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

1049
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1050
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 1: this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1051
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:33,560
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.