Gold is one of the precious metals that is not only used to make jewelry, but is also used in manufacturing and technology. It is even found in the human body. However, we haven't mined much of it.
Of course, listening to stories about the largest gold nugget and unique discovered jewelry made from this precious metal, belonging to almost all historical eras, one might think that we have mined an incredible amount of gold on Earth. However, this is not entirely true, writes IFLScience.
Researchers have found that all the gold found today can fit into a "tiny" cube measuring 23 meters by 23 meters. This is about the length of a cricket field. At the same time this "small" cube would weigh 8 times more than the Statue of Liberty.
It is known that in the history of mankind, about 187,000 tons of gold have been mined. In total, about 244,000 tons have been found. Due to the incredible feature of this metal to remain almost indestructible and recyclable, this entire quantity still exists.
Between 2,756 and 3,307 tons of gold are mined each year, while almost 30 percent of the total amount comes from mines in South Africa. Also today, it is China that is the largest gold miner, and the largest gold complex is Barrick Gold's Nevada gold mines. There they manage to produce 99,223 kilograms of gold per year.
The gold that still remains in the ground is measured either as "reserves," which are economically viable to mine at current prices for the metal, or as "resources," which require more research to determine whether they are economically viable or should be sold at a higher price.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates these reserves at about 57,000 tons, about 20 percent of the discovered gold that has yet to be mined. But advances in technology and new mining methods are making things easier and providing more opportunities to identify the valuable metal.
And this, for its part, makes resource extraction more economical, so it is unlikely that we will get all of Earth's gold in the next few years.
There are several known places on Earth where, despite the large amounts of gold in the bowels of the earth, it is not economically viable to mine there. Moreover, it may never even be possible to get there.
For example, deposits in Antarctica require a lot of equipment and risk to mine in the continent's harsh climate. Also, gold lies at the bottom of the ocean, but with no reliable way to get to it, the cost of extraction will never justify the investment.
If you look closely, even gold can be found on the moon. And although we will one day build a base on our satellite, right now lunar gold mining would cost far more than its market value.
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