December 26, 2008
“Worth its weight in gold.”
Turns out, there really isn’t that much gold out there (via kottke):
Figuring out the total amount of gold that has been produced by man is a little harder. To get at some kind of estimate, let’s figure that the world has been producing gold at 50 million ounces a year for 200 years. That number is probably a little high, but when you figure that the Aztecs and the Egyptians produced a fair amount of gold for a long time, it’s probably not too far off. Fifty million ounces * 200 years = 10 billion ounces. Ten billion ounces of gold would fit into a cube roughly 25 meters (about 82 feet) on a side. Consider that the Washington Monument measures 55 feet by 55 feet at its base and is 555 feet tall (17 x 17 x 170 m). That means that if you could somehow gather every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument.
Platinum is even scarcer and could fit within an average home.
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