Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by namibj on Monday June 23, 2025 @08:58AM
(#44355357)
You know slightly different NMR machines are used to scan entire humans, right?
They only really differ in scan pattern for this aspect. That's IIUC just a software change.
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by holowoodman on Monday June 23, 2025 @11:44AM
(#44356929)
Afaik not really. The ones that scan humans are tuned for a specific proton resonance frequency, so they basically measure hydrogen density. But you get a 3D-Plot because they do a computed tomography of that density.
The chemistry NMRs are spectrographs, so you dial through a whole frequency spectrum and look at the reflected/transmitted signal. With that you get different peaks for different nuclei plus some deviations for crystal or molecular structure.
But I have to admit, that I'm a little rusty on that topic, so you might be right anyways.
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by namibj on Thursday June 26, 2025 @06:33PM
(#44392134)
Yeah right I looked again and also: MRI doesn't really work for highly conductive (bulk) samples: you can't get the RF in/out of the conductor due to skin effect.
Also proton frequency only....
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by EasyMark on Monday June 23, 2025 @10:39PM
(#44362407)
This all sounds kind of expensive to do for every bar?
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by holowoodman on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @05:52PM
(#44371458)
Usually you draw a representative random sample for these kinds of things. You only test every bar if you detect a problem in the random sample.
And you can do activation analysis, where you activate the ingot with neutron radiation such that Gold isotopes form and decay. You then measure the decay gamma radiation spectrum and look for decay lines that are not gold but another material. This is non-destructive, but will make that ingot slightly radioactive for a while, but nothing that a few weeks of patience to wait for the decay can't fix.