(Photo: Bullion Vault/CC BY-ND 2.0)

It’s long been rumored that along the Irish border with Northern Ireland there lies a vast trove of gold beneath the surface of the Earth. 

The area had been mined hundreds of years ago, according to the BBC, but whoever did the mining then must have missed the gold. In more recent years, a former physiology professor and his company have been surveying and drilling into swaths of land to try and capture it. 

And recently, the company said they’d found four new zones of land that contain gold, according to the Irish Times. That’s in addition to an underground field of potential gold the company has already discovered several miles away.

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources has said there could be up to 20 million ounces, or tens of billions of dollars worth of gold, waiting to be uncovered. Still, it might be awhile before even a fraction of that is harvested, and the company told the BBC earlier that it might cost half of what the gold is worth just to harvest it. 

But the Dublin-based mining company persists, in what has been less of a gold rush than a slow unveiling, one new site at a time.