Researchers manage to turn gold magnetic

Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University discovered that gold can be magnetized - and this magnetization is induced by the heat flow driven by a temperature change.

The researchers demonstrated this by a simple experiment that used a thin film of gold on top of a block of Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) - an insulator magnet. The researchers made sure that the temperatures of the gold and the YIG were different, and they then applied a magnetic field parallel to the heat flow. The Hall voltage (measured in the gold film by in-plane electric current), showed a clear proportional dependence on the applied temperature gradient.

This recorded Hall voltage is seen as evidence of the evolution of magnetization in the thin gold film due to the heat flow.