[throwup238]

From the abstract [1]:

> Gold nuggets occur predominantly in quartz veins, and the current paradigm posits that gold precipitates from dilute (<1 mg/kg gold), hot, water ± carbon dioxide-rich fluids owing to changes in temperature, pressure and/or fluid chemistry.

I don't have access to the full paper but if they tested anywhere near those concentrations, it definitely won't apply to seawater. The amount of gold in oceans is estimated at 1 gram of dissolved gold per 100 million liters of seawater. The hydrothermal fluids that precipitate out gold in orogenic deposits are closer to 100,000 kg per 100 million liters.

This whole experiment is kind of nonsense. Orogenic gold deposits form under high pressures when tectonic plates collide, creating deep faults and shear zones and causign tons of hydrothermal fluid (at 200-450C) to penetrate those new cracks and dissolve the gold contained in them before carrying it all upwards. The chance that piezoelectricity plays much of an effect in those conditions is almost nil.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01514-1