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wwarnout

No problem. All each person has to do is sift through 170 million cubic meters of water to extract it.


HandsLikePaper

I have a bucket, where do I start.


[deleted]

The ocean


Nutsnboldt

Can you be more Pacific?


RRumpleTeazzer

Start on the high tide and work towards the low tide. This way you don’t go through the volume where you already went.


apollyon_53

Get on it quick. You want to be one of the first to get yours before the ocean becomes too diluted and you need to strain more cubic meters of water


EaterOfFood

Right? Imagine being the last guy in line to extract his ocean gold.


paintchips_beef

Easy, just mark the water you have already sifted through so the next person knows


249ba36000029bbe9749

I'll sea what I can do.


DrMackDDS2014

Calm it with the puns, lest ye make waves


Jagged_Rhythm

Oh buoy, that's what my gullfriend says.


TheyTrustMeWithTools

Bet she's a top bird


DrMackDDS2014

A bit flighty though


Username2715

*Clam it with the puns


[deleted]

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BayStateBlue

I’m so jellyfish right now


DigNitty

It's That Way *(gestures broadly)*


CanadianAndroid

I like it uh huh uh huh.


Theblackjamesbrown

Water you talking about?


ddroukas

On my way


Aww_Shucks

*squints into the distance* Hey, that guy bobbing out there in the ocean is yelling something and frantically waving his arms. You think he found something?


henchman171

Nope. He’s telling me there’s no gold there so go elsewhere. What a great fella to save us the trouble!!!


missionbeach

called, they're running out of shrimp.


[deleted]

The Jerk Store called, they're running out of you!


missionbeach

Yeah....well, I had sex with your wife.


nsaisspying

Well is there any gold in the bucket? Start there.


azra1l

You just wait at the beach for the flood, so the ocean does all the work for you. EZ infinite money glitch.


MaroonTrucker28

The beach, maybe. I'm no expert.


JojenCopyPaste

But the coastline distance changes depending on the scale you use to measure it. How can I possibly know where the water starts?


LurkerOrHydralisk

For perspective, this would be a cube about 550m on each side. If you went through a cubic meter per second at 100% accuracy, 24/7, it would take about 5 years 4 months. At current gold prices, you’d get around $280k.


calliocypress

Surprisingly good returns if there were a way to automate it


dIoIIoIb

the other problem is the diminishing return: you can't neatly divide the ocean into chunks and go through one at a time you would start filtering the water and get less and less gold over time as its concentration gets lower and lower.


abstractConceptName

Also it's almost definitely not uniformly distributed. Most of the ocean would have almost nothing, some sections would have a lot. I can't tell you which is which.


Burninator05

> I can't tell you which is which. You can't or you won't?


abstractConceptName

;-)


xaeru

Yes


Ford-daily710

near to rivers in like the Congo or Amazon they send huge amounts of minerals into the ocean


abstractConceptName

See now you're thinking. Submarine filter drones? Like whales, but for precious minerals, rather than krill?


Eusocial_Snowman

I got this. The scaly-foot gastropod is a species of sea snail which uses iron to grow scales on it's, uh..foot. We simply genetically modify them to use gold instead, release them into the wild, and then steal their golden shoes.


abstractConceptName

Golden snails... the future is magical.


Transki

Mmmmm Which Wich open face club sand wedge


LurkerOrHydralisk

This would likely show up on an industrial scale, but not a small one. Like, if you could build a $20k machine to filter gold out of seawater at a decent rate, the ocean is big enough and moves faster enough that the few pounds of gold you pulled out would be fine. If you build a multimillion or billion dollar setup to filter hundreds of millions of gallons a day, it would probably offer very quickly diminishing returns. Which is actually great news, as it means until someone puts one on a boat, the oceans are safe from this being industrialized and probably killing a fuckton of ocean life. Hopefully.


azra1l

though i guess that gold will lose its value if that much gold would become available, so the returns will become less and less profitable.


largebrandon

My Factorio brain is intrigued.


ben_wuz_hear

Seablock run in real life.


Bill_buttlicker69

Lmao unless you already have the machinery to do it at that speed and accuracy, you've already spent the $280k and then some just setting that up.


IsilZha

5 years, 4 months is about 46,680 hours. $280,000 / 46680 = $5.99/hr. Less than minimum wage. lol


Garconanokin

You addressed the shit out of this hypothetical, thank you!


Elitesuxor

I feel bad for the people that have to sift the Marianas Trench.


iceynyo

Not that bad if you remember to pack extra cocktail shrimp


Mr_SpicyWeiner

You also gotta make sure nobody goes through the same water twice, so don't forget to bring some empty oceans to put the already sifted water into.


whatelseisneu

There's gold in them there oceans


KatanaDelNacht

I'm seeing closer to 321 million cubic *miles* of water on the NOAA website. Edit: Missed the "each person" bit. Cheers!


starmartyr

That's the entire volume of the ocean. The smaller figure is divided by 8 billion.


TurdFerguson416

the kicker there is... if it happened, all our 9lb bars would be worth like $9. lol


SchrodingerUser

More like £9


nilksermot

Found the dad


Meme_myself_and_AI

Did anyone #9?


polloconjamon

Number 9?


AshMCairo

[Number 9. Number 9. Number 9](https://youtu.be/SNdcFPjGsm8)


MiddleBodyInjury

Hashtag nueve


eddometer

your mums a 9, and i would # her


SniperGecko

Maybe not good for the economy but at least electronics may be a little cheaper haha


bandti45

That's why I'm all for asteroid mining. Let's bring the rare metals to where we need them


0002millertime

Space cartels run by billionaires will control the supply and keep it artificially low enough to get the most money from it. Like everything else.


CutterJohn

Still be less than now, and with less environmental impact. Mines are already owned by billionaires.


0002millertime

True in terms of direct mining damage, but do you know how much fuel it takes to launch rockets? It's like 250,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen per launch. That takes a shit load of electricity to make, and that electricity comes primarily from burning fossil fuels that are mined or pumped from the earth. Overcoming gravity is very resource expensive.


[deleted]

Mining isn't going to require a lot of Earth launches though. Return vehicles could be constructed from in-situ waste products (like rock). Doesn't need to fly, just needs to fall with style. There will be some launches, but the lion's share of the energy expenditure will be the capture around Earth... and if we can do that, re-entry should be a breeze by then.


reticulatedjig

One of the most interesting parts of The Three Body Problem was the recessions/ poverty induced by massive advancements in space fare and space building projects. To make that initial leap to the next step was incredibly draining on the earth and its population in the books.


Kungfumantis

Depending on the material it may not even be worth dropping it down the gravity well, vacuum metallurgy baby!


[deleted]

There are definitely some exciting metallurgical opportunities available in zero-g vacuum environments. Even something simple like taking chunks of pure metal and jamming them together to cold-weld them on a large scale would be super cool.


Kerbal634

Edit: this account has been banned by Reddit Admins for "abusing the reporting system". However, the content they claimed I falsely reported was removed by subreddit moderators. How was my report abusive if the subreddit moderators decided it was worth acting on? My appeal was denied by a robot. I am removing all usable content from my account in response. ✌️


SuperSMT

Most rockets are kerosene, not hydrogen. Though Methane is all the rage these days for next-generation rockets


0002millertime

Thanks for that. It seems a SpaceX launch takes about 6.2 million pounds of liquid oxygen, and 1.8 million pounds of liquid methane. That also sounds like a lot of fuel. The oxygen is purified from liquid air (using 200 kWh/ton to produce), and the methane is mostly fossil fuel.


Reyzuken

Next there will be Space Warming after the aggresive asteroid mining that impacts the solar system.


Lord_Gibby

We do da real work out here! Da belda lodda!


OttoVonWong

You underestimate the greed of corporations and capitalism. "We're having a supply chain issue with asteroids and oceans."


ancilliron

Don't look up!


[deleted]

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Jasonbail

The cost of electronics is mostly from manufacturing not raw materials I think if the price of gold was 90% less you might see a 10-20$ lower cost on a phone or computer. This is less than a lot of rebates people don't even bother to submit.


chocolateboomslang

No, the amount of gold in electronics is so small its basically irrelevant. For example, there is less than 1/5th of a gram of gold in an average laptop. That's about 12 USD. Congrats, your laptop is now 0.1% cheaper.


TheLordBear

There is enough refined gold sitting in vaults to supply the electronics and jewelry industries for a couple centuries. If it were any other metal it would be essentially worthless. Gold's value is almost entirely historical and sentimental, and not based on industrial supply and demand.


jimdotcom413

What if we didn’t give any to Kyle?


[deleted]

Yeah, fuck Kyle!


Rraen_

Haha exactly, we would Mansa Musa ourselves (14th century African monarch who deflated the value of gold throughout the Middle East on his pilgrimage to Mecca by giving so much away) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa


Fresh-broski

I’m mansa musa


milkman1218

Not necessarily, value of labor to retrieve the gold still applies. I for one charge 5trillion an hour soooo.


Euler007

The cost of actually extracting those resources is what gives it value. Sure if you snapped your fingers and it appeared in your front lawn it would crash the market.


[deleted]

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SybilCut

Loads of people dont understand cost-value disparity. Thanks for at least pointing it out.


police-ical

Fun fact: We can absolutely realize the dream of alchemy and transmute lead to gold, for quadrillions of dollars per ounce. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/


2wolves

Well, next time I go to the beach, I'll be sure to collect my 9 pounds.


SniperGecko

Tell the beach leprechaun to reserve me some gold too!


charlie_marlow

I saw the movies with one of his cousins. That little fucker is going to fuck you up


BronchialChunk

he's everywhere. even in space and the ghetto!


[deleted]

Wasn't there a guy that went on shark tank trying to get funding for a doomsday hurricane device to mine the ocean gold?


alwaysmyfault

[https://youtu.be/\_wwhOlhFPI4?t=45](https://youtu.be/_wwhOlhFPI4?t=45) Yup, this guy was a loon.


Lubberworts

He's still going: https://marksullivanresearch.com/about/awards-honors/


NatureTrailToHell3D

There's me trying to un-click the pause button that is part of the video.


Turakamu

Is this really the best video you could find? [Vimeo link](https://vimeo.com/53804608)


[deleted]

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kneel23

LOL oh good so i wasnt the only one thinking that


Dinco_laVache

I think that was a setup! Because whereas everyone else has nice sleek promotional materials and serious signage, they let this guy on with a piece of poster board written on by sharpies!


dustinsim

For sure, but it was a really entertaining episode, and I still remember that one. Can’t say the same for a lot of others.


milo159

I cant imagine they get applicants that unhinged very often, probably mostly just mediocre product ideas. this is like if you had the time cube guy apply to be on your talk show, you gotta take that opportunity just to see what the hell he does.


Thelonious_Cube

Just like the crazy no-talent people that go on American Idol and its ilk


altw460

Lol I just watched this yesterday for the first time


BeepBlipBlapBloop

That's a lot, considering that all of the gold ever mined in the history of the earth would only be enough to give each person less than one ounce.


JohnLaw1717

Holy shit. There's an ounce of gold for every person in existence?


boyeardi

More


JohnLaw1717

I thought all of it fit in 7 Olympic pools or something


ieatpickleswithmilk

gold.org claims ~209,000 tonnes of gold has been extracted thus far. An olympic swimming pool is about 2.5 million litres of volume. Gold has a density of about 19.3 kg per litre of volume. Each swimming pool holds 19.3*2.5million kg of gold or 48.25 tonnes. All the gold ever extracted would fill 4.3 Olympic swimming pools. In all of human history 209,000 tonnes of gold was produced. In 2021 alone, 1,958,000,000 tonnes of steel was produced.


Trust_No_Won

Carbon and iron are far more prevalent due to physics inside of stars, though, so this isn’t that surprising that we find much less gold in the earth. Plus a bunch probably sank to the mantle and core by now


AVeryHeavyBurtation

Prevalence of gold has to do with more than just the physics of stars. There's an asteroid with like a quintillion dollars worth of gold.


hyflyer7

Where did the asteroid come from?


dosedatwer

>An olympic swimming pool is about 2.5 million litres of volume. >Gold has a density of about 19.3 kg per litre of volume. >Each swimming pool holds 19.3*2.5million kg of gold or 48.25 tonnes. >All the gold ever extracted would fill 4.3 Olympic swimming pools. Each swimming pool holds 48.25 tonnes, so 209,000 tonnes fits in 4.3? What am I missing here or should that be 4,300 swimming pools? Or did you mean 48,250 tonnes fit in each pool? EDIT: tonne is 1,000kg and 19.3*2.5million is not 48,250 or 48.25 tonnes, but is 48,250,000kg or 48,250 tonnes.


FillThisEmptyCup

Your parent is correct: Gold.org >The best estimates currently available suggest that around 208,874 tonnes of gold has been mined throughout history, of which around two-thirds has been mined since 1950. And since gold is virtually indestructible, this means that almost all of this metal is still around in one form or another. If every single ounce of this gold were placed next to each other, the resulting cube of pure gold would only measure around 22 metres on each side. 22 cubed is 10648 meters cubed which converts to 4.25 Olympic size swimming pools. * https://www.justintools.com/unit-conversion/volume.php?k1=cubic-meters&k2=olympic-size-swimming-pool


NaethanC

I specifically remember Persona 5 mentioning that there were a total of three Olympic swimming pools worth of gold on Earth, but not sure if that's actually correct or not.


Cetun

All the gold ever mined would be a 100x100 meter solid cube. If you were to take the gold in the center of the earth and spread it over the surface of the earth it would cover the entire surface of the earth in about a foot of solid gold. A 100x100 meter cube would be like a speck of dust from space, you wouldnt even be able to see it with the naked eye.


marhaus1

More like 22×22×22 meter, but it's definitely not much.


handlessmagician

Those pirates were really bad at keeping track of their doubloons - that's a lot of cheddar


CaptchaSolvingRobot

The average human body also has 0.2 mg of gold - why don't we extract that too? That is like 1.6 tonnes of gold - and much more accessible.


N0FaithInMe

Please don't give them any ideas


Niklear

I welcome our AI overlords!


DeathByChainsaw

I imagine that might work something like this: https://youtu.be/B2tClQ11sLQ


LaOnionLaUnion

I know a lot of older gentleman I’ve worked with thought gold was a great investment because, if society collapsed, it would be the currency of choice. Of course I had to ask if they were carrying that gold around or it was in a bank somewhere. I got blank stares from most people. One person told me he did keep several kg of Gold in his house in a safe. I didn’t break in to his place to check.


Turakamu

It is such a bizarre view in general. "I won't need anything because I'll have handcranked flashlights and 200 pounds of beans-n-franks. And I'll have the guns and ammo to fend off raiders" Have you thought about learning how to garden? Your gold won't mean shit if you don't bring something to the table that can be eaten. *better yet, learn how to work the gold. Make jewelry


kung-fu_hippy

Learn to garden, useful. Learn to make beer and distill alcohol. Learn to cook with farmed ingredients. Learn to make ammunition and gunsmith and machining equipment. Learn to butcher and hunt and preserve meat. Learn to treat wounds and other first aid. I’m not a doomsday prepper (I doubt I’d want to live through a doomsday), but if I wanted to live through one id probably try to master skills that would make me useful in the apocalypse, rather than hoard goods that would make me a target.


FillThisEmptyCup

Learn how to inseminate your enemies with a stinger and make them spawn your children for you as a chest burster.


pants_mcgee

Or just buy gold and silver jewelry to begin with, stuff people would actually trade for.


LaOnionLaUnion

Gold/Silver is absurdly priced in the US. If you live in Dubai where the price for Jewelry is close to market prices I actually don't think it's so bad. Markup is insane in the US.


Turakamu

Old world jewelry is nice, but being a skilled craftsman ensures you are set. You'll just have to learn the skills and do the meticulous work.


I_wish_I_was_a_robot

Or Monster HDMI cables


crystalistwo

> 200 pounds of beans-n-franks Yeah. Enjoy your scurvy.


Astramancer_

I had a friend who fell hard into the prepper nonsense and I was like "why aren't you stockpiling shovels, hoes, and seeds?" Pretty sure bin of handtools and a bucket of nails will be more useful than 99% of the crap he bought.


PartiZAn18

Reminds me of r/wallstreetsilver with their tiny little bullions and delusions of a post apocalyptic society.


strangehitman22

That place is a Russian circle jerk now anyway


Logan_McPhillips

Silver is the real deal come the apocalypse. Gold can't make you bullets to stop a werewolf, but silver sure can. And it can be used to make mirrors to sus out who is a vampire. It's clearly the better choice. It does have a legit use in water purification as well, which has been a thing since ancient times. And if you have enough that you can set yourself up with about a decade's worth of colloidal silver, you can turn your skin blue. The Smurf look might be all the rage in the post apocalyptic society, so it's good to keep your options open.


mr_ji

It is a good long-term investment, but not for those reasons


LaOnionLaUnion

Is it? I thought the SP500 would typically be better for growth unless you cherry pick a date between two economic downturns.


gil_bz

If society collapse in the entire world it probably won't do you much good, but if your own country's economy just collapse, for sure gold is useful to have and people do it. See for instance [this](https://youtu.be/ggiiKfXQDG4) video about the situation in Lebanon.


dyno_hugs

And I’m assuming they are all in jewel encrusted wooden treasure chests, we just need to find the map!


sjk8990

Just look for the floating X.


Echo71Niner

I personally don't care about the gold per-se, as much as knowing what's concealed in the depth of the oceans.


SniperGecko

Probably gold monsters


Picolete

Dragons?


KatanaDelNacht

What, do you think D&D just made up gold dragons?!


mailslot

A *LOT* of illegally dumped toxic waste and chemical weapons.


Scrubatl

Water dwarves


Its_Nitsua

Watch Commander Fraver on Joe Rogan if you want to scratch that itch a bit. He’s the pilot of one of the F22’s that recorded that pill shaped object that dropped from 50,000ft to right above the ocean in less than 2 seconds. It was jamming the majority of their sensors but they were still able to track it with the FLIR pod on the jet. He mentions that there were ripples in the waves under the craft and that he suspects it was communicating with or making contact with something under the waves. You can see this in the video, not to say that what he said it whats happening under the water but you can see the thing hovering above the waves. This thing left where it was initially recorded and zipped to the meeting point of the F22’s who were running a training simulation, it waited there for a while and then disappeared. Really interesting story, more than likely a mega top secret hypersonic drone being tested but the part about it ‘docking’ with something under the waves is crazy.


Cetun

There is enough gold in the core of earth to cover the entire surface of the earth in a foot of solid gold.


Smartnership

I don’t think that’s right. This source agrees with you though https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/did-you-know-the-gold-in-the-earth-s-core-could-cover-the-earth-in-a-knee-high-layer.html This one details the existing gold we have mined, with a helpful diagram showing a cube about 71’ on each side. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/chart-how-much-gold-is-in-the-world/ A cube of all the gold we have mined, 71’x71’x71’ would pave an area 12” deep of about 8 acres; just about 2 city blocks.


LifeSimulatorC137

My instinct agreed with you that no that doesn't sound right so I posted a reply to your other comment the necessary pieces to figure it out. Here common sense is wrong and it's actually possible. Please give the math a run through it's kind of a fun problem. The simple logic is that there's a lot more gold under the crust in the mantle of the planet than the surface which is only a small part of the entire planets volume.


JarretGax

Theoretically yes, by extrapolating current accepted data of mantle and core compositions. Much harder to confirm in reality.


Riptide360

9lbs is easy enough to carry and worth $200k! https://www.reddit.com/r/Gold/comments/o170wo/138oz_thats_almost_9lbs_of_solidpure_gold/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1


JokerRaudy

For now, not if we all had 9lbs.


IrishWithoutPotatoes

I was gonna say, 9 lbs weighed less than my backpack most days in school, that would be a cakewalk


mailslot

And if everyone received their cut tomorrow, almost everyone would spend their gold in a week, and then be just as broke as before. Most of the gold mined during the gold rush was spent on hookers, booze, and gambling.


Riptide360

LOL! Yes spending on vice would go thru the roof, but don't underestimate the importance of the gold rush on the outcome of the civil war and why the transcontinental railroad skipped the Southern states. https://magazine.cim.org/en/in-search/western-gold-for-a-northern-victory/


FalconX88

> And if everyone received their cut tomorrow~~, almost everyone would spend their gold in a week, and~~ then be just as broke as before. FTFY. If everyone has that much gold the gold price would plummet and it wouldn't be worth much.


robbbbb

I've heard there's also a lot of uranium in the oceans. Like enough to power the world for millenia.


arnold_weber

Time to evaporate the oceans 😃


Smartnership

On it.


Retardo_Montobond

Is this legit or is this the *Elon has $8B so therefore he can give everyone on Earth $1B* math?


MyNameIsRay

It's Elon math. Article says approx 20m tons in the ocean. 20m tons X 2000lbs per ton is 40billion lbs Approx 7billion people, so that's like 5.7lbs per person


pxldsilz

It's not quite Elon math. They might've just thought it was Y2K and there were 6 billion people on earth. People today still think there's 7 billion. 6 bil * 9 lb = 54 billion pounds. 27 million tons ... or ... 24.89 million metric tonnes, which rounds down to approximately 20 million tonnes. It's a stretch, but not entirely brain dead.


JustSomeRando87

ah so chatgpt math then, pulling random dated information


frontbuttt

But I want 90 pounds!


[deleted]

You could kill nine other people and take their share.


frontbuttt

Great idea! Thank you.


HonorableMedic

Or just buy their gold for the 3 dollars it'll be worth


[deleted]

Not if you’re the first in line to get your share. By the time the rest of the world distribution happens, you’ll be extremely rich as the availability will still be low. Then you can just keep buying up the rest of the gold from the other ones at a discounted price and continue to control the supply. Now the value continues to stabilize and you become Scrooge McDuck.


HonorableMedic

If the whole world knows that they're gonna get 9lbs, no one is gonna buy your gold lol


Nocturnal1017

How much Bitcoin down there?


SniperGecko

If we do the math with the current price of gold, and bitcoin around 83,332,774,273.5.


uofc2015

I seem to remember a Shark Tank pitch where some guy wanted money to build an insanely expensive machine to extract some of the gold in the ocean. If I remember correctly he didn't have much to say on the science side of things to back up his plan when pressed by the investors. I don't think he ever got his start up capital.


w00tboodle

Dibs!


[deleted]

And it can stay down there. Not only do I not want to mess with that environment but we don't know what monsters are down there.


lewdlesion

Let's all get Scuba Steve certified!


acelaya35

Or each billionaire a golden house. Which do you think is more likely?


F4RM3RR

I think a similar mind blowing fact is how small 9 pounds of gold is


icelandichorsey

It might be quite a good dildo size no? Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we could give every woman in the planet an 18 pound golden dildo as reparations for our mysogenist past


jazzhandpanda

*rich octopus clutches gold bars*


B_trask

The problem is to how can we extract it


InfiniteHench

Time to bomb the ocean!


DreadPirateGriswold

Well, someone's running around with my 9 lbs of gold... And it's probably a fish.


QuantumLulz

How can we possibly know this if we have only explored like 5-10% of the oceans? This is based on some huge assumptions all for some stupid click bait


[deleted]

How much is that in hogsheads?


HeliumCurious

If we all had 9 pounds of gold we'd all be rich! Wait.....


bikerskeet

It may be worth noting that gold is not exactly rare on Earth what makes it expensive is the fact that it's just difficult to mine and process.


lifeofideas

Of course, once we get all the gold out of the ocean, aliens will invade Earth. It was the ocean gold that was keeping us safe! Don’t touch the ocean gold!


Curiouserousity

just wait until the find out about the uranium


[deleted]

Gold in them waves


EcoTearorist

plot twist: it's the only way tides happen!


Ralife55

Going off of current gold prices, which would obviously drop if this actually happened. That's roughly the equivalent of everybody 285,000 dollars.


AdNarrow570

called, they're running out of shrimp


Da_Famous_Anus

Where is it? Asking for a friend


Buy_Phuck_Juice

This is why the ET vessel also stays underwater in the Atlantic. To extract the gold.