Figure of the month: 3,794

At just under 4,000 metres above sea level, Mount Erebus is not home to the highest gold deposit on earth – that is an honour which belongs to a gold mine near the Peruvian town of La Rinconada at an altitude of 5,100 metres above sea level. Nevertheless, Mount Erebus, located on Ross Island in Antarctica, has something to offer that is probably unique, at least at this altitude: the gold deposits inside the mountain are brought to the surface without human intervention. Mount Erebus is a volcano that has been continuously active since 1972 and – an absolute rarity – has a permanent lava lake.

Gold worth almost €6,000 “blown out” daily

In addition to molten lava, gases and rocks of all sorts, the volcano also spews out roughly 80 grams of gold crystals per day, currently worth almost €6,000, as British science portal IFL Science reported in early April 2024. Mount Erebus is considered the southernmost active volcano on our planet. It was first sighted in 1841 by British explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who was quite impressed by the ferocity of its eruptions at the time and named it “Erebus” after the personification of darkness in Greek mythology.

No Eldorado for soldiers of fortune

Before amateur gold seekers book a flight to Ross Island, here is the bad news: unfortunately, the gold is not easily “harvested” within reasonable effort. The gold crystals, which are only 20 micrometres in size, are scattered at a distance of up to 1,000 kilometres by the gases emitted during the constant eruptions of Mount Erebus, as researchers in Antarctica were able to determine via the latest technology. It is quite possible that heavier gold crystals have landed nearer to the volcano, but then they would probably be dangerously close, which in turn would make extraction impractical.