Chemists from Russia opened the “impossible” connection of gold
MOSCOW, September 20 — RIA Novosti. Scientists from Russia and Germany uncovered the secret of the stability calaverita, strange and rare mineral of gold, and found evidence that noble metal can form a very unusual compound with tellurium. Their findings and calculations were presented in the journal PNAS.
Upstairs
“The mineral calaverite amazing destiny. Noticeably influenced the “gold rush” for many decades it was a headache and more of a paradox for crystallography. The deeper he studied, the more new questions arose. Our team managed to tie all the weirdness calaverita in the framework of the simple model, experimenters can now hunt predicted a new connection,” — says Artem Oganov, Professor of Skoltech and MIPT.
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Gold, unlike most other metals, high chemical inertness and almost never found in nature in the form of large deposits of various compounds with other elements. Most of the inventory of gold mined by mankind until the early 20th century, was found in the form of nuggets and the net deposits of this metal.
The only exception to this rule is mineral calaverite, a compound of gold and tellurium AuTe2. He has long been interested not only miners, but also chemists and physicists, as calaverite has a very unusual structure, which cannot be explained within the classical theory of the structure of crystals. Only relatively recently have scientists solved the mystery of the device, describing it in four-dimensional space.