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Gold/Mining/Energy : A Little Forum For Gold Microclusters -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael J. Wendell who wrote (82)	1/2/1998 9:50:00 AM
From: Jerry in Omaha	Respond to of 142

Mr. Wendell; Thank you for the invite to post on your Microcluster thread. I will let the readers of the Naxos thread know and perhaps some will join us here. To readers of this thread it is my hope you find my contribution worthy of further discussion. The questions I pose below weren't composed to elicit specific responses. They were designed to open up possible new paths of investigation and contemplation. Since we at Naxos have reason to believe that Dr. Al Johnson has solved a significant portion of the puzzle of microclusters let me begin there. It seems to me if you want to understand Dr. Johnson's description of his process, "turn a complex ore into a non-complex ore which then can be assayed" you should be able to describe reactions using the tools of analytical chemistry. Another main branch of chemistry is physical chemistry. What work has been done to describe the physical processes involved? I'm thinking in macro terms of universal patterns of flow forms such as vortexes -- descriptions of physical aggregation and disaggregation proceses; and not the micro aspects of chemical processes -- valences, orbits, quantum states and that sort of stuff. Observe a simple stream of water from a faucet in the house and turn the flow down to just that point where you can see the solid stream separate into individual droplets; you might be seeing a model of disaggregation and the consequent formation of "water macro-clusters." Spray some water on a window and watch the individual drops roll down the glass and, joining with other drops along the way, become a single stream snaking down the window; a model for aggregation. Created in the spectacular energies of a supernova precious metals are created and distributed to the universe via a huge chaotic explosion. Somehow, like birds of a feather, like elements find like elements and they can come together to form veins of almost pure bulk elemental mass in the side of some mountain which then gets eroded; elements are disaggregated and eventually end up flowing downstream to a colloidal solution in the ocean. Precious metal recovery occurs at various stages en route, from nuggets to microclusters, over this disaggregation gravity gradient. The DDs represent, like the discovery of micro-fines decades ago, a previously unknown stage in the bulk metal disaggregation process. What is the physical description of events, from patterns of deposition to the grinding and scraping actions of breaking large particles into small ones? How do precious metals flow into the chemical dead-ends we call microclusters? And then how can you back the elements out of their dead-end situations where they're not even allowed to behave chemically the way they should? When we contemplate the dispersed microclusters moving back to normal chemistry is the liquid metal man in Terminator 2 a good image to use? At some level this re-aggregation must be what is happening in the Johnson Process. A "flow" is being reversed and disaggregated elements are "reversing their course" and re-aggregating in "drops" (metalic clusters - a "drop" for every stable cluster number) which then can be induced to continue to flow together until we have reached bulk quantities of relatively pure elemental metal. In "Metal Clusters and Magic Numbers" by Matthias Brack, which appeared in the December, 1997 issue of Scientific American, the last paragraph states; "Part of the initial motivation for studying clusters was to determine how many atoms are required for a tiny lump of material to attain the properties of the bulk solid. Physicists have learned a great deal about metal clusters and the magic number sizes that bring stability to them. But we still do not know the answer to this fundamental question about when and how the transition to the bulk solid occurs. All we can say for now is that the clusters of metal atoms we have studied constitute a weirdly unique arrangement of matter, one that surely offers more surprises to come." Now here's the payoff, Mr. Wendell; assuming the Johnson Process does what it says it does and makes a complex ore assayable, isn't this technique, de facto, the experimental tool which could be used to recover the answer to the "fundamental question" posed above? Don't we already have Mr. Brack's answer for him? Jerard P