  It has been recently observed for palladium and gold nanoparticles, that the
magnetic moment at constant applied field does not change with temperature over
the range comprised between 5 and 300 K. These samples with size smaller than
2.5 nm exhibit remanence up to room temperature. The permanent magnetism for so
small samples up to so high temperatures has been explained as due to blocking
of local magnetic moment by giant magnetic anisotropies. In this report we
show, by analysing the anisotropy of thiol capped gold films, that the orbital
momentum induced at the surface conduction electrons is crucial to understand
the observed giant anisotropy. The orbital motion is driven by localised charge
and/or spin through spin orbit interaction, that reaches extremely high values
at the surfaces. The induced orbital moment gives rise to an effective field of
the order of 103 T that is responsible of the giant anisotropy.
