Gold - Fotografía de stock

Gold in its hard-rock natural state, visible within a quartz vein. It is rare to fine visible gold occurring in rock outcrops exposed at the surface of the Earth. The sample was collected from a famed goldfield on the Palmer River, Far North Queensland, in Australia's Cape York. The pure gold can be extracted from the rock by initially crushing the quartz and conducting further processing on the gold ore. Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly reddish yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Gold can occur in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in alluvial deposits, and in veins as in this case. The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.