Advanced Technologies for Gold Prospection and Mining

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from Latin: aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright slightly orange-yellow dense soft malleable and ductilemetalin a pure form. Chemically gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental(native state) as nuggets or grains in rocks veins and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solutionseries with the native element silver (as electrum) naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly it occurs in minerals as gold compounds often with tellurium (gold tellurides).