• Question: Can you burn gold and how ?

    Asked by darkwolf_56 to Andrew on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Fensham-Smith

      Andrew Fensham-Smith answered on 23 Jun 2015:


      Well you can’t really burn gold – you probably could if you used a gas called fluorine gas. This is because fluorine gas is the most reactive gas we can make and will react with anything – some brave people do some fluorine gas chemistry, but they normally are missing a few fingers! Overall though, in most circumstances, I don’t think you can burn gold. Unless it’s a supernova of a star, which is how every element heavier than iron is made. All the elements in the supernova are burned, and in burning they get turned into heavier elements like gold. But this requires lots and lots of energy, more than we’ll ever be able to get on our planet. So all we can do is wait and watch while they happen.

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