Earthquake after earthquake may build up economically important gold deposits by concentrating the precious metal along quartz-rich veins under the ground.

Dion Weatherley of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and Richard Henley at the Australian National University in Canberra modelled jogs, or cracks, that cross geological faults. Ground motions can drastically increase the volume of such cracks, causing liquids trapped in them to depressurize rapidly and precipitate out their minerals, say the researchers.

This process, known as flash vaporization, could happen repeatedly in geologically active and gold-rich areas, such as Indonesia and South Africa.

Nature Geosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1759 (2013)