An active volcanic mountain in Antarctica spews a small fortune worth of gold into the atmosphere every day, IFL Science reports.
Mount Erebus on Deception Island, one of only two of Antarctica's 138 active volcanoes, is known for spewing out gas pellets containing about 80 grams of crystallized gold per day, worth about $6,000, according to experts.
The presence of gold dust was recorded as far away as 1,000 kilometers from the planet's southernmost volcano.
But according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Observatory, the precious metal is just one of many emitted from Erebus.
According to NASA, the volcano emits clouds of gas and vapor. It even occasionally spews out bomb-like rocks.
"Erebus... has been erupting continuously since at least 1972," Conor Bacon of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York told WordsSideKick.com.
He added that Erebus is also known for containing a "lava lake" in one of its summit craters, formed by molten material at surface level.
This is actually very rare, Bacon said. This is because it requires some special conditions to ensure that the surface "never freezes".
There is still much to understand about Mount Erebus. Moreover, there are important theories that this mountain could trigger different disasters and even more volcanoes.
According to Bacon, both Erebus and Deception Island "have few permanent monitoring instruments, primarily seismometers to detect seismic activity associated with volcanic eruptions."
Although monitoring vehicles can be deployed, access to this mountain is also very difficult. It requires a great effort to reach this point, which has much more difficult conditions and very long polar nights than other parts of the world.
