A supernova spewing gold across the universe
Alchemists struggled for centuries to turn base metals into gold. They famously failed. It can’t be done. Gold is only formed when stars explode, but not just any stars, only stars thirty times larger than our own star, the Sun. The unimaginable heat of a supernova is the only force capable of scrambling nuclei into the periodic element AU 79 -also known as gold.
The gold, along with other heavy elements from plutonium, platinum, neptunium, and more, then zoom through the universe until they hit some other heavenly body such as another star, planet, or meteorite.
Most of the Earths supply of gold arrived when the planet was still molten. It plunged deep into the iron core where most of it remains. Over the millenniums some of the gold was brought to the surface by cataclysmic convulsions like volcanoes, and later by tectonic plate shifts of the Earth’s cooling crust.
Humans found gold exotically special from pre-history on; first for its beauty and strange immutability, later for its value as consistently recognized wealth. Gold has properties unlike any other metal. No matter what it is melted or combined with,
it remains stubbornly itself, untouched by rust or tarnish.
It seemed as unearthly as it is. No wonder then that it was so often magically connected to the gods.
Kings of the Muisca people of Cundinamarca (modern Colombia) were said to coat their bodies in gold powder upon coronation. Then they would take a canoe to the center of Lake Guatavitá where, with the people watching from shore, they would leap into the lake, emerging clean and blessed.
The Muisca saw this as an offering of magical stuff sacred to their gods.
The conquistadors who heard the story thought differently. They drained Lake Guatavitá. They didn’t find much gold, but that didn’t stop them from taking whatever they could.
The fabled city of gold, El Dorado, was inspired by stories of a king covered in gold.
The viewpoint of the Muisca is typical of most ancient attitudes about gold. The opinion of the Spanish is typical of most modern attitudes about gold. Beyond both are the scientific discoveries that gold has amazing technological applications unknown until now.
Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals. It can be melted, stretched, and shaped into almost anything, including the thinnest of wires, even thread for embroidery. One slender 5-micron ounce can be stretched in a straight line for fifty miles. One ounce of gold can be hammered thin enough to cover 96.9 square feet. A stack of 7,055 sheets at 0.18 microns thinness would be no thicker than a dime). A solid cube of all the known gold in existence above ground would be 69 ft. square. (World Gold Council – 2017)
It’s a rare metal with many uses.
78% of the yearly gold supply is made into jewelry. Other industries, mostly electronics, medical, and dental, require about 12%. The remaining 10% of the yearly gold supply is used in financial transactions.
Isn’t it surprising that 10% of the gold supply should command more attention than the other 90%? Perhaps not. Wealth is always more interesting than practical considerations, and nothing says wealth louder than gold. When something is worth it’s weight in gold,
it can’t get any more valuable. Yet, these days, in most countries, it can’t be used as currency.
You can trade it, but you can’t spend it. That’s
a weird development ushered in by twentieth century government mischief and foolish financial theories.
From the earliest days of America until 1879 all sorts of bank-issued paper and all sorts of foreign coins were used as currency. Those who accepted paper certificates as payment from a bank that failed were left with pretty pieces of paper, but no buying power. The same was true of Confederate dollars. Those who took their payment in Spanish Pesos or any other foreign coin made of gold or silver fared much better.
To combat this irregularity, the 1879 US Government decided to issue dollars backed by gold. Every US dollar could be exchanged at any bank for an equal amount of gold. This stabilized business transactions and dollar value for the next 54 years. It was a blessed time unaffected by inflation. It was a time when savings accounts made sense.
That changed in 1933 when the Great Depression President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was persuaded by the loopy theories of John Maynard Keynes to exchange the gold standard for fiat money, that is dollars backed by the promise that what the government said the dollars were worth was really – really, no kidding - true.
Most of the great nations went along with the gag and did the same. The result has been cyclically alternating periods of boom & bust, with each “stimulus” of fiat money followed by inflation. Each newly “minted” dollar brings down the buying power of the dollars you already have. Rising prices are the inevitable result.
One day the value of all paper money will be worth exactly the price of the paper.
The price of gold will always be it’s weight in gold.
Scoundrels can always make more paper.
Only the stars can make more gold.