The Soapboxx
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Have A Few Quid To Spare? Fancy A Swimming Pool Full Of Liquid Gold?
Quick - what's the most expensive substance on the planet? Gold, silver, platinum, diamonds...?
Actually, it's something else entirely - Californium. Yeah, Californium. I mean, who comes up with these names? Some bloke in California, I guess. Indeed, Californium was first synthesized by University of California researchers Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950. It was the sixth transuranium element to be discovered - that being, a chemical element with an atomic number greater than that possessed by uranium, which is 92 - and the team announced their discovery on March 17, 1950. Obviously pressed for time, they named it after both the State and the University. It doesn't even occur naturally on Earth, but is, apparently, all over the universe. Just not here. And therefore hence the price tag - at $3.8 billion per troy pound, you won't get much change from a fiver. Bill Gates is supposed to have a personal fortune of some $50 billion, but I'd wager even he would be unlikely to ask for "a couple of pounds of Californium, a dozen eggs and some apples, mate," at his local grocers.
Troy pound? That's 12 troy ounces, each of which is 480 grains. A grain? That's exactly 64 milligrams. Alright, dunderhead?
But the problem here is that even assuming you had access to the sort of money that makes men and women go weak at the knees (but for vastly different reasons), there simply isn't enough Californium around to do anything good with it. So how exactly is a multi-billionaire supposed to impress? Silver's no good - it's far too tacky and the only attention you're likely to attract is from goths. Platinum is kind of the Jerusalem of precious metals - caught in a no-man's land between the other two and nobody really knows what to do with it. So that leaves gold. At the very least, it's nice and shiny.
So, say we could get our hands on a lot, what's the best thing we could do with it? A swimming pool full of liquid gold? Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's out of the reach of everybody on the planet. Apart from maybe the Catholic Church, and I'm not sure that would send out the right message. Let me explain.
A US Olympic pool contains 660,253.09 gallons of water.
There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.
So 128 x 660,253.09 = 83,232,395.52 ounces in a pool.
Spot Gold, as of 9.22am, March 6, 2007, just traded $643.50 per ounce.
So, an Olympic-sized pool filled with liquid spot gold would cost: $53,560,046,517.12. Or, more precisely, almost $54 billion, or £28 billion in British money.
So, it's not really going to happen, I don't think, but at the very least we can console ourselves by noting that not even Gates himself could swing it; that is, not without a lengthy phone call to Picture ("Yes, I do have a mortgage.")
Actually, it's something else entirely - Californium. Yeah, Californium. I mean, who comes up with these names? Some bloke in California, I guess. Indeed, Californium was first synthesized by University of California researchers Stanley G. Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950. It was the sixth transuranium element to be discovered - that being, a chemical element with an atomic number greater than that possessed by uranium, which is 92 - and the team announced their discovery on March 17, 1950. Obviously pressed for time, they named it after both the State and the University. It doesn't even occur naturally on Earth, but is, apparently, all over the universe. Just not here. And therefore hence the price tag - at $3.8 billion per troy pound, you won't get much change from a fiver. Bill Gates is supposed to have a personal fortune of some $50 billion, but I'd wager even he would be unlikely to ask for "a couple of pounds of Californium, a dozen eggs and some apples, mate," at his local grocers.
Troy pound? That's 12 troy ounces, each of which is 480 grains. A grain? That's exactly 64 milligrams. Alright, dunderhead?
But the problem here is that even assuming you had access to the sort of money that makes men and women go weak at the knees (but for vastly different reasons), there simply isn't enough Californium around to do anything good with it. So how exactly is a multi-billionaire supposed to impress? Silver's no good - it's far too tacky and the only attention you're likely to attract is from goths. Platinum is kind of the Jerusalem of precious metals - caught in a no-man's land between the other two and nobody really knows what to do with it. So that leaves gold. At the very least, it's nice and shiny.
So, say we could get our hands on a lot, what's the best thing we could do with it? A swimming pool full of liquid gold? Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's out of the reach of everybody on the planet. Apart from maybe the Catholic Church, and I'm not sure that would send out the right message. Let me explain.
A US Olympic pool contains 660,253.09 gallons of water.
There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon.
So 128 x 660,253.09 = 83,232,395.52 ounces in a pool.
Spot Gold, as of 9.22am, March 6, 2007, just traded $643.50 per ounce.
So, an Olympic-sized pool filled with liquid spot gold would cost: $53,560,046,517.12. Or, more precisely, almost $54 billion, or £28 billion in British money.
So, it's not really going to happen, I don't think, but at the very least we can console ourselves by noting that not even Gates himself could swing it; that is, not without a lengthy phone call to Picture ("Yes, I do have a mortgage.")
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