***A unique piece of wired gold named the Ram’s Horn is quite rare and evenly mysterious. That is why scientists took their particle accelerator and tried to take a bit of its mystery away.***

<center>https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7837/46359978814_8eef0fbfee_b.jpg</center>
CREDIT: Harvard University

* Be also sure to check out my other posts and follow me @kralizec and subscribe to my Youtube channel at [Kralizec Gaming Youtube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM6bVobsVUBzJ-oqajqI-eA)

Back in 1887, in the Ground Gog Mine that can be found in Colorado a mysterious piece of gold was found. It was shaped like curled wires, making it quite different golden nuggets. Nowadays, this strange piece of gold with a length of 12 centimeters and a weight of 263 grams is known as the Ram’s Horn and is kept at the Mineralogical and Geological Museum Harvard University.

The Ram’s Horn irritates mineralogists. It’s rare and extremely high density is almost like a curse. Since they cannot use traditional methods to look into it, nobody knew how it looks on the inside, until now. But we had to use something special as damaging its structure was just not an option. And because gold is so dense a low-energy x-ray or anything similar wasn’t an option either.

That’s why scientists in the Los Alamos National Laboratory stepped in. They used a particle that makes low-energy and high-energy protons and neutrons and used the neutrons to peer into the Ram’s Horn.

Several types of metals and alloys form a wired structure naturally. For example, wired silver is somewhat common. But wired gold? That’s rare. And Ram’s Horn is probably the best example of wired gold in the world.

The neutron analysis shows that the structure of wired gold is very different from wired silver. Silver wires are actually polycrystalline aggregates made from many hundreds of thousands of crystals per wire. The golden wires are made just from a few crystals. On top of that, it was found out that the Ram’s Horn isn’t pure gold, but instead, an allow of gold and silver.

**Sources:**
* https://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2019/February/0213-gold-specimen-neutrons.php


---

* If you like the content I’m producing about science maybe you will like the content I produce about gaming as well! Be sure to check out my other posts!