Why is gold so precious?

[GoldenGriffin]

2 minutes ago, Derv said:

Sunny 🌞

👍

[Derv]

1 minute ago, GoldenGriffin said:

Did you catch 5 news about 12 months ago?

No, should I have ? Has the sun set on Nissan ?

[GoldenGriffin]

7 hours ago, Derv said:

No, should I have ? Has the sun set on Nissan ?

Yes 😀

They showed a close up of the sun, showing a giant gold nugget moving around, saying it was the size of earth.

Did you see what was published by the BBC after that re climate change?

Edited March 8, 2021 by GoldenGriffin
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[Derv]

2 minutes ago, GoldenGriffin said:

Yes, you and everyone should have taken note.

They showed a close up of the sun, showing a giant gold nugget moving around, saying it was the size of earth.

Did you see what was published by the BBC after that re climate change?

Enlighten me . I think I may have heard a rumbling about a sunspot but nothing on the occult, sorry climate .

I'm not Mr current affairs of late 

[Bigmarc]

I often think the same about coins, legally we are not allowed to change the state of them (British ones at least). We buy coins based upon the metal content and spot price, yet we cannot use the metal for anything else other than being a coin. That gold just has a life of changing hands.

Throughout history nations have waged war on each other over it. It's the world's currency 

[GoldenGriffin]

13 hours ago, Derv said:

Enlighten me . I think I may have heard a rumbling about a sunspot but nothing on the occult, sorry climate .

I'm not Mr current affairs of late 

Didn't quite capture it all, but what they showed had a possible link towards climate change and a possible indicator, that pulling gold out of the ground had some baring on the earth's temperatures increasing. 

Made me think about the tragic vastly increased number of bush fires in Australia and whether they had increased mining production.

This was the chart from the BBC - the yellow shading is what I overlaid and it covers 50 years from 1970 to 2020 - 1970 is when we significantly increased gold mining (with now only 20% left to mine). 

Now, you could say, the increased temperatures are due to more CO2 released in to the atmosphere and trapping the heat and, it could be that, but, what I also found interesting, is the fact that the graph starts around 1850, when it was the gold rush period in America (1848 to 1855).

I'm not saying gold is definitely like a magnet, attracting the heat from the sun and that's why global temperatures are going up and is a significant reason as to why gold is so precious and without it, there would be no life on Earth...but, it's interesting that the sun is made of gold and to see the correlation from when we started mining it in significant quantities and from when we saw significant increased temperatures. 🤔

The majority of gold that is mined, is buried again...

Edited March 8, 2021 by GoldenGriffin
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[Pete]

Historic reasons from coinage, jewellery, gilding of ornate furniture, buildings etc.
This is a malleable, highly electrical conductive inert, non toxic metal with a nice colour.
Gold plated onto electrical connectors ensures optimum long term connectivity because it does not oxidise.
It does not rust or tarnish and will not dissolve in anything but aqua regia.
It has only a few industrial uses so is not consumed in any quantity compared to other metals.
It can easily be bashed to such a thin layer ( gold leaf ) that you can actually see through it.
Platinum is a similar precious metal and was until fairly recently considered even more valuable as a coin or jewellery.
Credit cards were rated according to status like medals - silver / gold / platinum with platinum being the top.

As for gold price, because it is traded as a commodity, its price reflects the market which in turn is also determined by the amount of gold that exists and the cost of obtaining more out of the ground. Most metals are priced according to scarcity and cost of mining and refining. Many metals are much more expensive than gold some up to $5,000 per gram.

[dwreck]

As stated by others... It is one of the only elements i know of that doesn't react with anything (that i know of) so it stays the same forever and doesn't tarnish. Hence a great store of value over very long periods of time. Also gold has been money for over 2,500 years. There are many uses in electronics because of the properties of the metal. It is also needed for space travel if we ever want to think about leaving this planet full of beautiful people with their heads up their rear.

[Bigmarc]

Also if Indiana Jones risked life and limb for a small statue of copper it wouldn't be the same 😁

[Kman]

It's all about money

Lets say for every hour you work you  get one pebble

That pebble represents an hour of your life you gave up, you can swap it for food  or if you save up enough pebbles you can swap them for larger items

Whats good about the pebble is you don't have to spend it right away, you can work your whole life until you're not as physically capable, retire and still have thousands of hours of work saved up in pebbles

To have a civilised society you need money to facilitate trade and to be able to store and log your hard work

You can't use pebbles of course because you can find them anywhere, what's not just anywhere? gold

We can all agree we need money and we can all agree gold is perfect for it, that's why it has value, the value is the tool of money

Its obvious why oil has value

It's obvious why electric has value

Money is just as important to humanity that's why gold has value 

[GoldenGriffin]

6 hours ago, Bigmarc said:

Also if Indiana Jones risked life and limb for a small statue of copper it wouldn't be the same 😁

That made me laugh 😅

[Bars]

10 hours ago, Bigmarc said:

Also if Indiana Jones risked life and limb for a small statue of copper it wouldn't be the same 😁

Depends........if hes stealing it from a dilapidated building in a rough council estate whilst vying for it with some hoodlums

[KDave]

As kman has said it's the concept of money that gives gold its value. 

Separate the concept of money from the metal. The metal has certain physical characteristics that make it the best physical vehicle for the concept, however other metals share some of that attribute (most obvious silver), and some crypto currencies embody the concept without existing physically at all. 

[Ceaiu]

Because it's in our DNA.

All humans (regardless of geopolitical borders, sexual orientation, gender, age...) associate gold with wealth.

What else comes close to that?

Rolex. Sure, but isn't this brand one of the largest consumers of gold in the world, if not the.

[Martlet]

Because the ancient aliens that created us through genetic experimentation, put in our genes the desire for gold, to collect and horde it for their return.  Or something like that. 

[Bigmarc]

4 minutes ago, Martlet said:

Because the ancient aliens that created us through genetic experimentation, put in our genes the desire for gold, to collect and horde it for their return.  Or something like that. 

I think a different set of aliens planted something in my wife's genes to horde plastic cr*p from Amazon.

[dicker]

23 hours ago, Derv said:

Finite , dense , malleable , conductive + all they other good uses....

... more importantly for me.... It's lovely and gold  😊

You missed sonorous! 🙂

[Spark268]

the words god and gold are very closely related, and differ by one letter only.

if i recall correctly, on US banknotes, it does say "In gold we trust"

[Spark268]

On 08/03/2021 at 00:02, GoldenGriffin said:

Didn't quite capture it all, but what they showed had a possible link towards climate change and a possible indicator, that pulling gold out of the ground had some baring on the earth's temperatures increasing. 

Made me think about the tragic vastly increased number of bush fires in Australia and whether they had increased mining production.

This was the chart from the BBC - the yellow shading is what I overlaid and it covers 50 years from 1970 to 2020 - 1970 is when we significantly increased gold mining (with now only 20% left to mine). 

Now, you could say, the increased temperatures are due to more CO2 released in to the atmosphere and trapping the heat and, it could be that, but, what I also found interesting, is the fact that the graph starts around 1850, when it was the gold rush period in America (1848 to 1855).

 

I'm not saying gold is definitely like a magnet, attracting the heat from the sun and that's why global temperatures are going up and is a significant reason as to why gold is so precious and without it, there would be no life on Earth...but, it's interesting that the sun is made of gold and to see the correlation from when we started mining it in significant quantities and from when we saw significant increased temperatures. 🤔

The majority of gold that is mined, is buried again...

correlation doesn't imply causation.

Climate change: increased gold exploration/extraction are both related to industrial revolution (19th C gold rush) and technology (mid >20th C) . the earlier exploration (panning for gold, digging using spades) was relatively emission free, and the more recent extractions are likely only responsible for ~0.000001% of total global emissions. 

EDIT: Based on estimates, gold production accounts for 0.35% CO2 emissions globally, versus 4.36% for the iron & steel industry, and 2.76% for the airline industry. Gold production is polluting in other ways also - so further technological improvements are needed, along with government intervention along the lines of a carbon tax so that production/distribution of all products reflects the true cost to the environment. Do we really need to ship single use products (poor quality clothes, plastic trinkets) all the way from the far east - only to bury them in landfills once they've expired?

P.S. I'm confident that you have been born since 1900, and one could argue that you are solely responsible for climate change, using the same chart 😛

Edited March 9, 2021 by Spark268

[GoldenGriffin]

Former Pres. DT was at a climate change convention about a year or so ago and what stood out for me at the time, was him saying to the scientists...

"sometimes science gets it wrong, don't worry, the Earth will cool down".

That comment will have made most people think he's mad, to not believe what the scientists were saying, but, to me, it added a little weight to what my theory was (and to be clear, it's only a theory!).

I know that DT is a big fan of gold and thought that his response was interesting - or maybe you could put it down to DT not knowing what to say at the conference and wasn't really prepared to give a Pres. type of response and so, came up with that instead 😅

Edited March 9, 2021 by GoldenGriffin
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[Spark268]

science in the way it is practiced is mostly flawed anyway - as John Gray says, faith in religion was replaced by faith in science over the last century - look where that has gotten us !

[Robb]

On 07/03/2021 at 17:45, 5huggy said:

And "DOWN right WICKED " for electrical conductivity in "delicate" electronic equipment!

That can barely be beaten! 👌😉👍

Silver has better electrical conductivity than gold.

[5huggy]

15 hours ago, Robb said:

Silver has better electrical conductivity than gold.

Yes you are quite right

however Gold has NO corrosion downside!

Thats why PC Keyboards are full of Silver in the tracks - but PC memory EDGE connectors (quality one's anyway) are GOLD! 👌😉👍

[Robb]

Yes, gold has better corrosion resistance and is used in mission critical applications.  Most people mistakenly believe gold is used in those applications due to superior electrical conductivity.  Silver and copper are both better conductors...

The 'fingers' of the various PCB in a PC (memory, adapter cards, even CPUs  etc) are plated, about 30 micoinches or about a 0.000762 millimeter coating (!).

Each generation of PCBs require less and less gold to manufacture.  The result is the  industrial use of gold as each decade passes remains relatively flat, despite an increase in the quantity of electrical devices require the superior corrosion resistance that gold offers.   25 years ago an Intel Pentium Pro CPU using a Pin Grid Array connector had enough gold for 100s of modern Flip Chip CPUs with Land Grid Array connections.  BTW, that old Intel Pentium Pro cpu that most people just threw away,  contained about 0.33 grams of 24k gold (!).

[LawrenceChard]

On 07/03/2021 at 23:40, Derv said:

Datsun     😉

Is "Datsun" related to Dat ole man river?