Interesting Contest Involving Silver Ore

The other day, I was reading Science magazine as I normally do while eating lunch and I happened across an article very relavent to the precious metals markets and coins in general.

Barrick Gold Corp. has a mine in Argentina, the Veladero Mine, that is sitting on an estimated 180 million ounces of silver ore. The catch? All of the silver is encrusted with silica in particles a few micrometers in diameter. Due to particle size, it is not cost-effective enough to grind the ore into what essentially would have to be dust for the standard cyanide leaching method to be effective. Barrick's own in-house metallurgists have not been able to come up with a feasible and cost- effective method for extraction.

Their solution to the problem is that they decided to host a worldwide open competition to come up with a clean and cost-effective way to extract the silver. The prize? $10,000,000

I have a feeling that chemists, metallurgists, and other scientists around the world are salivating at the chance of winning a prize like that. Barrick will also even fund and test the most promising proposals. Since I am a major science geek and all, I predict that the method will incorporate an organo-metallic extraction, probably using genentically engineered bacteria or something along those lines

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