I was sent this photograph of a lady’s gold neck chain she
was wearing, taken with a Canon DSLR camera fitted with an infrared filter. Had
the chain been placed on a table and photographed in the same way, it would
have produced a pretty uninteresting more or less blank picture. But because
the gold is being excited by the electromagnetic field produced by the wearer
it is emitting infrared radiation that is being picked up by the camera. This
is exactly what happens when gold is buried and excited by the Earth’s electromagnetic
field, which is a lot stronger.
A graduate scientist explained this process fairly simply to
me. Gold, as all substances, is made up of atoms. Atoms consist of a dense
positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons, all
being held together by electromagnetic force. Under the influence of an electromagnetic
field the electrons are excited into an orbit further from the nucleus and then
spontaneously return to their normal orbit releasing energy in the form of
infrared radiation.
