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@Sapyx said:

@YQQ said:
Is the " Gold DNA test" maybe not that far away timewise? just thinking...
OR has it already been developed and is "locked away" for good, as the big GOV do not want it?
just simply a maybe not so impossible fantasy.....?

Gold alloys can be "fingerprinted" (that term is usually preferred to "DNA test", though both are technically inaccurate since there's nothing biological about the tests). For example, jewellers will usually add a small amount of titanium (typically around 1%) to their jewellery alloy, to make their gold products physically tougher and more durable without sacrificing much in either fineness or colour. Titanium was an element that was effectively unknown and unused in gold refining or alloying prior to the 1960s, and titanium cannot dissolve into gold "naturally", so detecting titanium in an allegedly ancient, mediaeval or early modern gold coin is certain proof that it's a fake. Detection of titanium has been useful in proving that certain counterfeit gold coins are indeed modern counterfeits.

Likewise, naturally occurring gold is never 99.999% pure, it always has within it various contaminants, trace elements in various quantities, which can be peculiar to the origin point of that gold. But there are only a finite number of possible contaminating elements (probably around a dozen or so). The difference between gold from different sources is not usually the presence or absence of elements, but the varying proportions of those elements - which is why, when you mix gold from different sources together, you end up with a list of elemental proportions that has been effectively randomized, and either points to a different source or to no source at all; you can't un-scramble eggs, and it's impossible to un-mix that gold again to find the individual sources. And if you refine out all of the impurities to 99.99% purity, then there's not much impurity left to do that measurement and the error in the resultant chemical analysis is going to be even greater.

Many chemical elements can have their provenances narrowed down by looking at isotope ratios. Gold, unfortunately, is rather unique among the heavy elements in having only one non-radioactive isotope (Au-197) and all of the radioactive isotopes have half-lives too short to be present in geological formations of naturally-occurring gold; all that an isotope study would prove is that the gold wasn't recently transmutated in a nuclear reactor.

TLDR: gold alloys can be "fingerprinted", pure refined gold cannot be, and the laws of physics aren't going to be changing to allow this to happen.

But can't we just ignore the laws of physics to keep the discussion going?

high end circulation strike would bring millions

@USMarine6 said:
Wahoo!! Sooo? What do i win again?

Again, nothing!

Wahoo!! Sooo? What do i win again?

the slab shots look so much better

ps - wah