What element is closely related to silver?

Answer 1

If you look at the Periodic Table,and silver's location (amongst gold, palladium, rhodium, & platinum, amongst others') and you look at some of it's properties (soft like gold, platinum like catalytic activity, highest electrical and thermal conductance of ANY pure element) then silver is most like both gold and platinum. It conducts like gold, and shares with it many similar physical properties (soft, malleable and dense). Also, silver can behave much like the platinum group metals (with the exception of rhodium), in it's catalytic abilities. Although not noble, it has many noble'esque qualities.

So I'd say, silver is most like palladium, then platinum, followed closely by gold. This, having assigned characteristic, and weighing them proportionally in the best way I know how.