I hope palladium and other PGM become worthless so catalyst converters are ok to own
Gold actually is worthless but humanity has decided it has value. Whats actually valuable is food, water, housing, mental peace, low stress, moral standards etc.
Gold is a actually extremely useful, and has a ton of practical applications where it’s not used because of cost. Diamonds, which are supposedly abundant in asteroids, and quite plentiful on earth, on the other hand, can be manufactured in tool grade cheaply, and gem grade can be made for about $300/carat.
Yeah it’s super useful for semiconductors
It’s a good conductor, doesn’t corrode easily.
Gold price would lower until it’s the same price as it costs to mine and bring it to earth, if that’s at all lower than whatever it’s currently.
It’s funny that people think the wealth from asteroid mining will trickle down.
If anything, it seems like an opportunity for billionaires to have indentured servants who are stuck in outer space mining until their term is up. That’s probably some of the reason they have been investing so heavily in prisons.
Oi, beltalowda
You may think that you are scared. But you are not. That is your sharpness. That’s your power. We are Belters. Nothing in the world is foreign to us. The place we go is the place we belong. This is no different. No one has more right to this. None more prepared. Inulada go through the ring. Call it there own. But a Belter opened it. We are The Belt. We are strong. We are sharp and we don’t feel fear. This moment belongs to us. For Beltalowada!
Given none of the supply chain and infrastructure to support mining and retrieval exists, it would need to be researched and constructed. That money would be invested in the market and flood down for tooling, manufacturing and manpower.
Once you have the rock, you’ll need to process it into usable materials.
Low price gold flooding the market may be bad short term, but there are processes that will benefit from cheap gold in manufacturing. The market will stabilize.
It is more than just magicing the rock to someone’s bank account in liquid currency. There is a lot of money they will have to put in up front before they would see a financial return.
In today’s age they’ll fill 95% of that supply chain with robots and automation. Even if it’s 40% less effective at retrieving the material, that will still probably result in better overall profit margins.
The one thing capitalism has proven to be excellent at innovating is wealth extraction. Giving more to one person in every way possible. By the time we have this infrastructure built blue collar workers will be largely redundant.
It happened to my industry (broadcast television)
It happened to my father’s industry (animation)
It happened to my step father’s industry (biotech)
It happened to my brother’s industry (manufacturing)
My sister and brother in law just saw their industries stop receiving funding (librarian and environmental scientist)
Don’t count on new fields creating news jobs anymore. That’s the way of the old world.
Whatever benefits having more gold would bring will only be given to the ultra wealthy who control that gold. Even if it brings the cost of phones down by 15% it won’t make a difference in how much the average person struggles. In fact, the resources consumed in retrieving and processing the gold will probably end up hurting most of our cost of living.
We need to work on our social sciences before any other science can bring anyone real benefit anymore…
We need to work on our social sciences before any other science can bring anyone real benefit anymore…
Well said. I have associate degrees only in Bio/Chem, and I was going to keep going but… why? To work for an evil pharmaceutical company? To work in the shitty corporate cannabis industry? To advise rich assholes on how to cut down our national forests in a way which makes it appear like it’s not the end of the world?
The only STEM career I’ve found which seems guaranteed to be ethical is the people who do wildlife surveys, finding endangered bees and whatnot to block bullshit luxury real estate. But going through all that education to aim for a single, specific, probably-not-very-common position doesn’t seem very smart.
And where do you think the majority of the wealth is going to be concentrated? Or do you think everyone on Earth will magically become a billionaire?
But mining makes everyone rich, right? Right?
Hey, I’m game! Oversaturate the gold market and those at the top (including governments) would instantly be knocked down to regular people’s level financially!
That being said, if this ever happened, there would be new laws and standards implemented immediately in order for nothing to change… The game is rigged. If the top 1% begin to lose, they just change the rules…
I mean, they’d switch value systems. They’ve already done that by making “debt” as the unit of value.
More likely - whichever billionaire mined it (well, funded the mining anyway) would hoard it off the market to keep the value high and make them richer.
Exactly what they did with diamonds.
Until we got synthetic diamonds
The natural ones are still dug up by slaves and sold for a fortune, for some evil reason.
Because the people who can afford them love how they were obtained by putting the “rabble” in their place.
“The mine owners did not find the gold asteroid, they did not mine the gold asteroid, they did not mill the gold asteroid, but by some weird alchemy all the gold from the asteroid belonged to them!”
Bill Haywood
No, that would make a few people incomprehensible wealthy while everyone else starved.
It all depends on property rights and ownership. If few people hoard and control all of the resources and means of production that make the resources like gold valuable, they will continue to profit. Everyone else’s standard of living will continue to plummet in their efforts to control more markets (through wars, embargoes, trade agreements, etc.) and squeeze out the greatest amount of profits from everything and everyone.
Until property relations change, the property-less (and I don’t mean a single family homes….i mean machines and resources that create wealth) will continue to struggle to greater and greater degrees across the world.
That’s where we currently stand.
Any way you slice it gold would be less-valuable.
Asteroid mining is good for resource gathering, not accumulation of wealth. And even then it’s much more useful for resource gathering for use in space than on Earth. If you can launch once, then mine, process, and use the resources without having to do more launches and landings it’s much more efficient. Then you’d start manufacturing in space to further reduce the amount of required launches.
This would be useful for tech reasons I think. Isn’t gold a better conductor than copper?
Nah, copper has better conductivity. Gold is better with corrosion resistance and it doesn’t char when making contact. That’s why it’s used to plate terminal contacts, like the ends of hdmi plugs, and switch contacts. Silver is the best.
At least everything would be covered in gold then. Electronics would be cheaper too.
They’d be cheaper to make.
Then we kill all the billionaires and then they’re cheaper to have
With gold bullets and a gold guillotine. I think they would like that.
Gold plated isn’t actually hard I think I could to that in my bathtub but would it hold an edge?
Best I can do is a can of krylon
Maybe the blade would have to be replaced on every use, but the weight would still do its job.
… actually, maybe the blade wouldn’t even need to be replaced.
I’ll believe you I don’t kn9w about this stuff I think I sharpened a kitchen knife once and my dad was making me he said I did a bad job and I tried to use that knife later I think he was being too nice
i suppose i could duck it, but is gold more conductive than copper or silver? i thought gold was used because it resists oxidation but not because of its conductivity.
edit: yeah so tldr my hunch was right. but they’re all pretty similar in conductivity.
https://www.samaterials.com/blog/top-10-metal-conductors-of-electricity.html
yeah, after impact, quite evenly. last time it happened, it was called iridium anomaly. there’s not that much gold in electronics and other platinum group metals are more useful from material engineering perspective
There is no much specifically because it is expensive.
there’s not much because it can be plated real thin and more is not necessary
No. If it were as cheap as steel, we wound make whole packages from it. Completely new things. We already use thicker and more gold plating where the cost is not as much of a factor, like space, medical and military stuff.
The accountant vs the engineer
? Gold would be a big upgrade over copper
yes for corrosion resistance and ductility. no for hardness, electrical and heat conductivity. you can’t use gold or its compounds as catalysts where copper makes sense
For what? Gold is a shit conductor compared to copper.
You are wrong , Fry-man
It’s not shit, it’s top 3 behind silver and copper. But those oxidize and gold doesn’t. So a gold coated silver core is what you want.
or you can use slightly thicker copper. but sometimes you can’t, and that’s when silver is a slight upgrade
i heard that microwave parts for satellite use are made this way: first you start with aluminum, for structural and weight reasons. then it’s plated on inside (where microwaves are) with thin layer of zinc, then with copper. you can’t plate copper on aluminum directly. copper is there to conduct microwave current, but silver is slightly better, so there’s a layer of silver to conduct most of it, and copper handles the rest. then it’s topped with gold, and normally there’s a layer of nickel between copper and gold, but it’s a big nope for microwaves, and silver is alternative. it’s a very thin layer, so thin that it doesn’t conduct a lot of current, it’s there only for corrosion resistance
I stand corrected. Idk why I thought it was a better conductor
Gold coating for connectors is nice. For everything else it doesn’t really matter, you get an oxide layer that prevents further oxidation.
It has ~70% the conductivity of pure copper, it’s not “shit”
Would it? Perhaps it wouldn’t oxidise as fast, but copper is more conductive.
De Beers has entered the chat
If you actually love your SO you need to save up 2 years salary for a ring.
Gold is already worthless, main purpose of gold is that its shiny and pretty, less than 1% of gold mined gets used for electronics and stuff. The rest ist accessoires. The only reason gold costs something is because people think that it is worth something.
Yes, and you’re making my mental gears turn. The only reason gold is worth something is because some regulatory power says it’s worth something. As soon as they say it’s not worth something that will be the end. As for now, some thieves go to Costco with stolen credit cards and they buy thousands of dollars of gold bars to resell. 😡 For that and many other reasons, I think gold should be demoted to the worth of arid dirt.
Gold is more useful than copper or silver. If there were enough of it, it would be used as a coating because it doesn’t oxidize, and in connectors and wiring due to it’s low electrical resistance. It’s commercial value is the reason it became the monetary standard.
Gold is a valuable catalyst in chemical industry, and has value as a very efficient conductor that is very malleable and corrosion resistant. Sure, most of its market value comes from people wanting to put it in jewellery and other decorations, but it’s objectively far, far, more valuable than most other materials.
Gold does have practical value. It doesn’t oxidize or tarnish at standard temperature and pressure, it is soft enough to beat into shape with a hammer and it can be rolled out incredibly thinly. If it were as common as iron, we would see it used everywhere. Gold sewer pipes, gold roofing, even gold foil to wrap your sandwich.
If I remember correctly, even its conductivity is higher than copper. Maybe in an alternative reality, we’d be using gold cables
Gold plated contacts are fairly common on various cables and plugs, it doesn’t take much gold.
Used a LOT for connections in spacecraft and satellites because of its high conductivity/no corrosion properties
Welp, time to crash that meteor into the Earth, right?
I could see them attaching rockets to it to try this. Or maybe move it into earth orbit to mine it.
If they brought it to the surface what happens when it goes through the atmosphere? Does gold “burn”?
Does gold “burn”? Not in the common sense, but it can both melt and vaporise (at about 1000 C and 3000 C respectively). It can also form stable oxides, and is probably more likely to do so when condensing from a liquid or vapour state mixed with air. So the answer is twofold: A lot of the gold would melt vaporise before precipitating as very fine particles that are spread with the wind, while an amount of it would likely form oxides in the process. The result would be a bunch of gold and gold oxide dust spread over a vast area, probably taking years before all of it reaches the ground.
Not if that size is accurate. gold price at 10^5 EUR/kg, a quintillion being 10^18, makes 10^13 kilos, at ~20000 kilos per cubic metre 5*10^8 cubic metres, or a block of 1000x1000x500 meters (~ sphere of 1km diameter), and that’s only for a single quintillion, and assuming it’s all gold, no rock. Nothing of that size burns up on atmospheric entry
Thanks for doing the math. I was wondering if some portion of the gold burns off. Also does it kill us all on impact?
To be honest I don’t know (also not OP) but if the gold is one solid chunk there might be chance that it will function as a large enough heatsink that it wont “burn”… But then again it’s probably not just one chunk… So some of the outer layers might “burn” as you say, but the gold atoms are not lost. That would require a nuclear reaction… Instead some of that gold would turn into liquid, and some would turn into gas. In this state it might reach with other elements in the atmosphere, but if it doesn’t it will turn back into solid form again when it cools. In that case the result would be microscopic gold clumps spread over a huge area.
I just got home to use a proper calculator instead of estimating in my head, and with 700 quintillion (as per the screenshot / meme), and gold density less “roundabouted”, at 19000 kilos / cubic metre, this would be the same as a solid gold sphere of 8.9 kilometres in diameter (3rd root of 700 is 8.88 - and wow, my rough estimate of 1km for 1 quintillion was spot on! :)
And yes, that would absolutely be a planet killer asteroid. I don’t see how anything but primitive life forms on Earth could survive that: https://www.space.com/asteroid-apocalypse-how-big-can-humanity-survive
It’s not, but its main benefit is that it didn’t tarnish or corrode. Copper is the second most conductive metal, with silver actually being the first.
Ea-nāṣir and his low-quality gold…
Motherboards used gold before. Recyclers make a good profit finding old motherboards just for the gold.
Many motherboards still use gold components.
Being shiny and pretty is the least worthless thing you can be
A lot of people live their entire lives only being shiny and pretty and have a pretty good go of it.
And it’s all yours 😊
FWIW this isn’t true, the $700 quintillion figure was an estimate of the total metal value (most of which would be iron) based on the asteroid being similar in composition to nickel-iron meteorites. As it happens we actually think it’s a fair bit rockier than that these days. There’d still be vast amounts of metal there but less than initially thought and it would be harder to mine and process with the extra rock.
Also the estimate was just multiplying the mass of each metal by its current market price, which isn’t how any of this works anyway.
Yes, like everyone in Zimbabwe is a billionaire in Zimbabwe dollars.
The so-called Zimbillionaires
Can we send Putin, Trump and a bunch of African tyrants (whatever their names are) there? I bet they would be glad.
