Recently the national bank of Ethiopia discovered that
much of the gold in its possession was fake. It was simply gold-plated steel. It found this out after it sent a shipment of gold to South Africa, which promptly sent it back.
Theo Gray,
writing for popsci.com, points out that it's incredible that a national bank fell for a fraud like this, since simply by picking up the gold bars someone should have noticed that they were too light to be real -- gold being much heavier than steel.
Gray then considers a potentially very useful question: how could you create a fake gold bar that would be convincing enough to pass the pick-up test? The solution he comes up with is to use tungsten, which is about as heavy as gold, but much cheaper:
start with a tungsten slug about 1/8-inch smaller in each dimension than the gold bar you want, then cast a 1/16-inch layer of real pure gold all around it. This bar would feel right in the hand, it would have a dead ring when knocked as gold should, it would test right chemically, it would weigh *exactly* the right amount, and though I don't know this for sure, I think it would also pass an x-ray fluorescence scan, the 1/16" layer of pure gold being enough to stop the x-rays from reaching any tungsten. You'd pretty much have to drill it to find out it's fake.
Gray notes that it would cost about $50,000 to produce a fake gold bar in this way. But the bar, if accepted as real, would be worth around $400,000 -- which would be a pretty good return on your investment.
Comments
Christopher said:
[P]erhaps George Bush will just jump in there and commit to some sort of bail-out program for the US taxpayers to foot the bill for."
Nah, that's reserved for big money crooks in THIS country.
Now if you had planned ahead just a bit, you would have included an ad for where to obtain tungsten cheaply...
😊
http://www.joyfuldigesting.com/
It is the old(2007) story about an artist who tied up a dog and let it die without food and water at exhibition.
Is it true or not - so difficult to say.
I hope dog is safe.
Also interesting that nobody from Big news print this story, it is alive only in blogs.
To find out - google "Guillermo Vargas". There are pictures, story, and always link to petiotion.
"I thought Bear Stearns collapsed because its assets were insufficient to cover its liabilities in the face of an increasing number of 'cash calls' by some large investors. Basically, they had neglected to cover their ass when taking out several large investments."
Well, yeah, but I was making a JOKE! Sheesh. 😊
As for the Ethiopian gold plundering...the gold was likely real when it first entered the vault. Over time, real gold bars were switched out for the fake ones. Since guards probably only looked through the door, the bars looked real. Some Ethiopian government official has the real bars sitting in a Swiss vault with their name on the door.
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/21272/German_ProSieben_TV_Channel_Finds_500_Gram_Tungsten_Bar_At_W.C.Heraeus_Gold_Foundry_With_Bank_Origin.html
Google: ultrasonic gold Pamp
Start now.
Best for all.