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Rattlesnake gold consists of gold chloride and ammonia. The substance was discovered in the 16th century, and the strange smoke effect was described by German alchemist Sebald Schwarzer in 1585. Why this happens has been unclear for centuries.
In the new study, scientists exploded just 5 milligrams of rattlesnake gold by heating it on a thin sheet of aluminium. The smoke was recorded with special copper grids and further analysed using an electron microscope. It turned out that it contained gold nanoparticles of spherical shape.
