From: tomas_e@LINK.Physchem.KTH.SE (Tomas Eriksson)
Subject: Re: Mercuric Oxide and smugglers practices.
Reply-To: tomas_e@LINK.Physchem.KTH.SE
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 20:23:03 GMT

In article <9210141645.AA04208@is1.vub.ac.be>, jqdoumen@vub.ac.be (Doumen Jan) writes:
>
>I have a question about Mercuric Oxide.
>Therefore I think I must tell you somewhat more about why I wanted to
>know something about this chemical.
>A few days ago a friend of mine came to me with an unidentified sample.
>He said that he got it from a friend and wanted to know what it was.
>The only thing he could tell me was that the formula should look something
>like SBOHg, but since he is not a chemist he didn't knew what he was talking
>about.
>I started getting worried since it is strange that someone has a sample of
>a chemical of which he doesn't know what it is. Moreover, the friend is from
>Zaire. I knew that in Zaire it is forbidden to take mercury (liquid) across
>the border because some keen smugglers had found that it was easy to
>dissolve gold in it, bring the mercury out of the country, and then destill
>the liquid to recover the gold.
>Is there anybody who knows to make something out of this misterious SBOHg,
>or can give me more info on relations between gold and mercury compounds ?

Don't you have any more information than this? Such as, 
- where did your friend get this sample from?
- why did he lay his hands on it?
- what does the sample look like?

Presenting a chemist with a sample and saying "what is this?" is a 
rather stupid thing. To expect that someone will be able to identify a 
substance which is only identified as "SBOHg" (mercuric oxide is HgO) is 
a bit too optimistic, in my humble opinion.

Some months or a year back, there was this "red mercury" story. There 
was a substance/mixture called "red mercury" which was supposed to be 
radioactive, extremely poisonous, extremely dense, very expensive &c., 
and which had various military and nuclear applications, and which now 
smugglers brought out of the former Soviet Union to sell to terrorists, 
Saddam Hussein and so on. Noone seemed to able to identify what this 
"red mercury" was, chemically. I think it is safe to say that it turned 
out to be a way for some people dealing with arms &c. from former SU to 
try to fool stupid governments with nuclear ambitions to pay them huge 
amounts of money for something completely worthless. I.e. "red mercury" 
doesn't exist.

Could it be that this mercury compound of your friend's is "red mercury"? :-)

When it comes to mercury and gold, you are probably referring to amalgamated 
gold, i.e. an alloy of gold and mercury, but with rather little gold, to 
make it appear mercury-like. The only amalgamates I've seen have been 
solid; e.g. amalgamated zinc (as granules) are used as a reducing 
agents, and their Hg content has been rather low. I suppose that you can 
make Hg-rich alloys with some compounds, and get something that's liquid 
at room temperature. This doesn't mean that there is very much in common 
between gold and mercury.

Tomas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomas Eriksson                                          tomas_e@physchem.kth.se
            Surface Force Group, Department of Physical Chemistry,
               Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

"These latter-day practitioners of surface chemistry reflect a lingering of the
adventurous spirit of the Enlightment" -- Charles Tanford
Newsgroups: sci.chem