There are two primary methods people use to produce what’s commonly called monoatomic gold, also known as ORMUS or ORME (Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements). The first is a complex chemical process starting with pure metallic gold, originally described in a patent by Arizona farmer David Hudson in the late 1980s. The second is a simpler alkaline precipitation method using mineral-rich salt water. Both require careful handling of caustic chemicals, and neither product has been verified by mainstream science to have the properties its proponents claim.
What Monoatomic Gold Actually Refers To
In standard chemistry, a monoatomic element is simply one that exists as single atoms rather than bonded pairs or clusters. Noble gases like helium and argon are naturally monoatomic. Gold, by contrast, is a metal that bonds into lattice structures in its normal solid state.
The “monoatomic gold” people search for is something different. David Hudson coined the term ORME after discovering an unidentified material in his Arizona soil that didn’t register on standard assay equipment. He filed a patent describing “non-metallic, monoatomic forms of transition elements” and claimed these materials existed in a unique nuclear state with unusual physical properties, including superconductivity at room temperature. The broader community now uses the terms ORMUS, m-state materials, and monoatomic elements interchangeably. None of these claimed properties have been independently confirmed in peer-reviewed research.
The Hudson Method: Starting With Pure Gold
Hudson’s patented process begins with 99.99% pure gold and uses a long sequence of acid treatments, salt additions, and pH adjustments to break gold down from metallic clusters into what he described as a single-atom state. This is a multi-day laboratory procedure requiring dangerous concentrated acids and precise chemical technique. Here’s the general sequence.
First, a small amount of pure gold (the patent uses 50 mg) is dissolved in aqua regia, a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acid that’s one of the few liquids capable of dissolving gold. The solution is then boiled down repeatedly with additions of concentrated hydrochloric acid. Each boil-down cycle drives off nitric acid fumes. You repeat this until no more fumes appear, which indicates all the nitric acid is gone and the gold has converted entirely to gold chloride, an orangish-red salt.
Next, sodium chloride is added at a ratio of 20 moles of sodium per mole of gold, and the mixture is diluted with deionized water to 400 ml. This solution is gently boiled down to a dry salt, then alternately dissolved in deionized water and 6 molar hydrochloric acid until the color stops changing. The final treatment uses hydrochloric acid.
After a final boil-down and dilution, the resulting solution sits at a pH of roughly 1.0. This is where the critical step happens: dilute sodium hydroxide (lye) is added very slowly, with constant stirring, to raise the pH to exactly 7.0. The pH must remain stable at 7.0 for more than twelve hours before proceeding. Rushing this step or overshooting the pH is the most common point of failure people report.
The neutralized solution is then boiled down and treated with concentrated nitric acid to convert everything to a sodium-gold nitrate, eliminating all chlorides. After further dilution, the material hydrolyzes in water and forms a white precipitate. This precipitate is filtered and vacuum-dried at 120°C for two hours, yielding a light grey powder that Hudson identified as the monoatomic gold end product.
Equipment for the Hudson Method
This process is essentially lab chemistry, and the equipment reflects that. You would need borosilicate glass beakers and flasks, a Buchner funnel with No. 42 filter paper for filtration, a magnetic stirrer, a reliable digital pH meter (not litmus strips), a vacuum drying setup, and a heat source capable of controlled gentle boiling. The patent also references zircon crucibles and tube furnaces for processing other platinum-group elements, though those aren’t required for the basic gold procedure.
The chemical reagents include aqua regia (or its components: concentrated hydrochloric acid and concentrated nitric acid separately), food-grade sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide, and large quantities of deionized water. Every one of these concentrated acids is extremely dangerous. Aqua regia produces toxic fumes including chlorine gas and must only be handled in a proper fume hood. Concentrated hydrochloric acid causes severe chemical burns on contact with skin. This is not a kitchen-table project.
The Wet Precipitation Method
The far more common approach in the ORMUS community skips metallic gold entirely. Instead, it uses mineral-rich salt as a source, operating on the belief that m-state elements are already present in unrefined sea salt, Dead Sea salt, or certain rock salts. The process is essentially a controlled pH adjustment that causes minerals to precipitate out of solution.
You start by making a lye solution: roughly half a cup of food-grade sodium hydroxide granules dissolved per quart of distilled water. Separately, dissolve your chosen salt in distilled water. The starting pH of the salt solution typically falls between 7.5 and 8.5.
The lye solution is added drop by drop to the salt water while stirring constantly. The pH will spike with each drop, then settle back down. You continue this slow addition, watching the pH carefully. The critical rule is to never let the pH exceed 10.78. Most practitioners stop when the pH holds steady at 10.6. Going above 10.78 reportedly causes sodium hydroxide itself to precipitate, contaminating the product with caustic lye. A white, fluffy precipitate forms in the solution as the pH rises through the 10.0 to 10.6 range.
Once the target pH is reached, the container is covered and left undisturbed so the precipitate settles to the bottom. The clear liquid on top is carefully poured or siphoned off. Then the precipitate must be washed to remove residual salt and lye. The standard approach is to add distilled water at a 1:1 ratio with the precipitate volume, let it settle for 24 to 48 hours, and pour off the water. This wash cycle is repeated three times. An alternative shortcut uses a 3:1 water-to-precipitate ratio and a single 48-hour settling period. The final product is a white or off-white wet precipitate that practitioners consume in small amounts mixed with water.
Safety Concerns With Both Methods
The Hudson method involves concentrated acids that produce toxic fumes, cause severe burns, and can react violently if mixed improperly. Aqua regia in particular generates chlorine gas and nitrosyl chloride fumes, both of which are dangerous to inhale. Without a proper fume hood and chemical safety training, attempting this process creates real risk of chemical injury.
The wet method is physically safer to perform but introduces a different concern: you’re producing an uncharacterized precipitate from mineral salts and planning to ingest it. The precipitate contains whatever was in your starting salt, which depending on the source could include heavy metals, lead, mercury, or arsenic in addition to the magnesium, calcium, and other minerals that naturally precipitate at high pH. There’s no simple way to test what you’ve actually made without analytical chemistry equipment.
Research on gold nanoparticle toxicity shows that the body handles gold very differently depending on particle size. Bulk gold is chemically inert and considered safe, which is why gold compounds have been used clinically for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. But at the nanoscale, gold particles accumulate in the liver, spleen, and kidneys. Particles smaller than about 10 nanometers have been found in the brain, heart, and other organs in animal studies. Only particles below roughly 5.5 nanometers are small enough to be cleared through the kidneys. The long-term effects of regularly ingesting gold in any unconventional form remain unstudied.
What Science Says About the End Product
No independent laboratory has confirmed that either method produces a material with the properties Hudson described. The white precipitate from the wet method is most likely a mixture of magnesium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide, both of which are white, fluffy, and precipitate from salt water at exactly the pH range used in the process. Magnesium hydroxide is the active ingredient in milk of magnesia.
The Hudson patent was filed but has faced skepticism because the claimed properties, particularly room-temperature superconductivity and anomalous weight changes, have not been replicated under controlled conditions by other researchers. Actual imaging of monatomic gold ions in laboratory settings, such as work published in Science Advances using electron microscopy, shows individual gold atoms behaving according to standard physics: diffusing through liquids with measurable activation energies and obeying known thermodynamic principles, with no evidence of exotic nuclear states.
People who use these methods report subjective experiences ranging from increased mental clarity to vivid dreams, but these accounts lack controlled comparisons. If you choose to experiment with either process, the practical reality is that you’re working with hazardous chemicals to produce a substance whose identity and safety profile are genuinely unknown.