Mr. Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry for inventing the process for converting the ultra-stable form of nitrogen in the air to the more reactive chemical form required to make fertilizer. He then spent a good chuck of the rest of his career trying to do the opposite chemical trick: pulling reactive gold ions out of seawater and converting them to the more stable form found in gold nuggets, bars, and bullion. However, he was unsuccessful. But Delftia acidovorans has succeeded where Haber failed. The gold-loving microbe manufactures and secretes delftibactin, which forces gold ions to precipitate out of solution. As the bacterica carry out this job, they not only remove highly toxic gold ions from their surroundings, but they also create the neutrally charged gold nuggets on which it then makes a home. Delftibactin has been isolated for the first time and scientist are hopefully in trying to harvest gold from the ocean. However, there is a problem. Delftibactin also carries out the same trick with iron ions, so if the scientists try it on a large scale they might get lumps of iron instead.
Correlation:
If
scientist are able to do this then it could help bring more currency into the
world. The more gold we have backing money than the more we can produce. This
could really help out the United States and it would also help out the
countries we support. If we have more currency than we will be able to send
more support to the countries that need it from us. This would also help to pay
off our debts to China so that our children aren’t the ones left with cleaning
up the mess we made.
Personal Reaction:
I choose this article because not having enough money is a
problem that everyone faces at some point in their lives. I recently just had
an experience where having a gold nugget would have really benefited me
greatly. So I found this article very interesting because I didn’t even know
something like this was possible! Hopefully it works!
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