❌

Reading view

A Gold Leaf Left for a Foreign God Points to a Greek Merchant Who May Have Supplied the Roman Army

Some 1,900 years ago, a man named Thrasymedes gave a thin sheet of gold to a god who was neither Greek nor Roman. The deity came from the borderlands of what is now southeastern Turkey. The offering was left inside a Roman army fort on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, in modern Georgia, […]

  •  

Gold isn’t inert, it just has bodyguards protecting it

Gold is weird. It's one of the few metals that doesn’t really oxidize. Even silver and copperβ€”from the same column of the periodic tableβ€”form weak oxides. Naively, you might expect that gold would tarnish just like silver. Gold also sits right next to platinum, but it has none of that metal’s catalytic properties.

Then came gold nanoparticles that acted like catalysts, and we were confused by their apparent willingness to take part in chemical reactions.

Now, a pair of scientists hasΒ explained that gold’s inertness isn’t inherent to the atom but rather to the surfaces that gold crystals form. Before we get to the results, let’s first take a look at the traditional explanation for gold’s inertness and why an inert material that has no catalytic activity suddenly acts as a catalyst when in its nanoparticle form.

Read full article

Comments

Β© Kieran Stone

  •  

Understanding the Debasement of Currency: Lessons from History

Global stock markets faced a significant crash on Thursday and Friday, with the Dow dropping 2,200 points and the S&P 500 losing 10% in two days due to Trump's tariffs. This event highlights historical wealth manipulation by financial elites, ongoing since ancient times, emphasizing the importance of true riches found in faith.

  •  
❌