The geology behind gold: hydrothermal fluids, quartz veins, placers and the main deposit types.
How Gold Forms
Epithermal deposits form in hot spring systems just below the surface of volcanic areas. Learn the two main types, what their quartz looks like and why some of the world's richest gold veins are epithermal.
How Gold Forms
Gold is made in stellar collisions, carried by hot underground water and finally concentrated by rivers. Here is the whole journey, step by step.
How Gold Forms
Lode gold is still locked in the rock where it formed. Placer gold has been freed by erosion and moved by water. Here is how to tell them apart and why it matters for where you look.
How Gold Forms
Orogenic gold forms during mountain building, when deep fluids travel up major faults and leave gold in quartz veins. These deposits feed most of the world's nugget fields.
How Gold Forms
Porphyry deposits are enormous, low-grade bodies of copper and gold around cooling intrusions. Here is how they form, why the gold is invisible and why they matter even if you will never pan one.
How Gold Forms
Gold and quartz travel together in the same hot underground water and drop out under the same conditions. Here is why, and how to tell promising quartz from the barren kind.