/sci/ - Science & Math

it's used to insulate some spacecraft
other than waht you said, I can't think of anything else

>>10273966
> aliens come and take all of the world's gold away tonight
Lol id like to see them try. Im fucking peaked!

Handful of applications for heterogeneous catalysis.

truly amazing hello humans value shiny

>>10273966
use as a currency
duh

>>10273973
>>10273999
retarded.
not reading op.
nobody uses gold as currency.
most currency is plated steel, paper, plastic.

I would even hazard to say that golds non reactive nature precludes it from most scientific and industrial applications

to further the discourse can anyone like to suggest appropriate value hierarchy for elements according to availability and industrial use. iron would probably be a good centre marker because it is very very useful and very very plentiful. also carbon extremely plentiful and extremely useful, silicone the same. Platinum and similar metals have great used as catalysts and also very rare so they would be towards the top. uranium and other Radioactive would probably not be as high as one would think because there are large reserves and it is only the refining that makes them truly useful. I would imagine gold to be somewhere at the bottom of the pyramid somewhere near bismuth

>>10274011
most currency is bits, you silly child

>>10274109
how much gold is one bit worth

>>10274118
quite a bit actually

>>10274012
people actually believed that untill about 1998

thousands of papers using Au(I) and Au(III) based catalysts have been published since then

>>10273966
Demonstrating the casimir effect and other quantum things

>>10273966
>so say the aliens come and take all of the world's gold away tonight what would be the real problem for humans coping without gold tomorrow. (apart from (they) will be pissed off)
There would be a sudden run on plumbing fixtures in Saudi Arabia.
You yourself admit it has practical applications, so if they sucked up all the gold you'd have a shit load of electronics that just stopped working.
There's only one thing you need to know about why gold is worth what gold is: https://youtu.be/Qk4GDuzZAM8

>>10274109
That's not currency.

>>10273966
Used in all kinds of delicate instrumentation vital to our industrial society.

>>10274470
Most currency isn't fungible.

>>10273966
https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml

>>10273966
What's your actual intent here OP?
>convince everyone gold is actually just a worthless base metal
>"here, let me take all that worthless metal off you, here's a few bucks, LOL"
>cash it all in
>become rich
nice try OP

>>10274159
It can be demonstrated using lead as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzVJPgCn-Z8

>>10274292
Good film, and that first clip is one of the more poignant moments.

You would think there would be a lot more applications for a conductive, highly malleable nonferrous metal that doesn't really oxidize quickly.

>>10274012
Lowest IQ post I have read this week

Here is a decent infographic of the relative scarcity of the elements, this does not tell us the relati e abundance and usage though.

>>10273966
It's scarce and functionally immortal

>>10274012
>non reactive nature precludes it from use

>>10274545
Heretic! There is no source of info outside 4Chan!

>>10275403
you don't read much huh

>>10273966
It's critical for high end electronics and can also be worked extremely thin.
It's a useful and valuable material but yes it's overpriced due to speculators

>>10273966
Gold can be used as a magnet to attract Jews. If you need to find Jews in a garbage pile just tie a gold bar to a string and run it threw the garbage pile. You will pull all the Jews out.

>>10275408
>Helium
>endangered
nigger what

>>10273966
>what actual uses does gold have?
Take a close look at an LED. See that little bond wire? It's gold.

>>10273966
I think its used in many electronics (small amounts), there are even people in poor countries that mine used electronics for gold.

>>10274109
This. The VAST majority of trades, payments and exchanges are digital.

If you make a gun out of gold, it will kill any enemy with one shot, placed anywhere on the body.

>>10275968
The US holds most of the world's supply of helium in an underground storage facility and is mandated by Congress to sell it off cheaply. That's why there are helium balloons everywhere. At the rate we are getting through it, it will run out in the foreseeable future, and then all sorts of things that really need helium will be screwed.

Many microphones use a thin gold membrane to pick up vibrations from Noise man

>>10273966
it's unreactive which makes it a good coating for things you don't want to react or corrode away.
Also shiiiny.

>he doesnt frequently create aqua regia

>>10276100
Not if it's a werewolf. You need a silver gun for that.

>>10275968

The value of gold is just ....... a social construct. Historically, it was used as a currency so people expect that it will still get used as such. If one day people start refusing gold as a currency its value will plummet.

>>10275968
>>10276473

is there anything to be said for its density? lead gets used a lot as dead weight since it's so much easier to get, but there's gotta be applications where the extra density of gold vs lead would be helpful

>>10276481
>lead is 11.4 g/cc
>the mass density of gold is 19.3 g/cc
>osmium is 22.59 g/cc
The spanish and portugese DID use gold as ballast on their big galleons coming back from the new world, but that was because their whole point in existing was to cart a shitload of gold back home, and you might as well use it for ballast because it is so dense.
They would send the ships from port with the bottom of the ship loaded with big stone slabs that would be offloaded, and replaced by more valuable heavy cargo at their destination.

>>10273966
it is used to make the thiniest wires that can be made and thay wont get any rust ever, it is a great electric conductor, the most maleable meterial and one of the the most chemically stable metals

>>10275408
douth that shit anon magnesium is everywhere, francium an cesium seem a lot rarer so this is bullshit

>>10277264
yeah but isn't osmium is way more expensive than gold

Au is a very good conductor and a great platform to build self-assembled monolayers on top of using the Au-SH system.

Congratulations OP. You discovered economics is irrational. People are driven by desire not by logic. Just think hard about most peoples choices and youll realize they are wildly pointless. Like people will value more having a tv han having heqñrhcare

>>10273966
It's used as catalysts to speed up chemical processes.

It's used as a conductor with very low resistance within electronics

It's used as shielding for radiation that is more lightweight than the lead equivalent

It's used in materials that need to stay working for a very long time (centuries) without failure due to corrosion/rusting.

It's used as supplements in certain medicines to inhibit certain neurological symptoms like lithium.

I'm sure I missed some. However there are a lot of other uses gold has but just aren't economical. If gold suddenly became just as cheap as aluminium it would see almost as much use in all kinds of applications. The applications are limited BECAUSE gold is so expensive. Just like aluminium used to be more expensive than gold and had limited uses as well.

In the future through transmutation/astroid mining and other techniques we will have very cheap gold and it'll be used in all kinds of stuff. For example Processors, RAM and audio equipment could be made faster and more sharp if we used more gold for the transistors and transmission of signals.

>>10279504
Gold audio.

That's why I support meteorite mining.

Won't graphene kind of technology provide even more clear sound with no necessity to go outerspace for resources?

>>10274012
its non reactive nature makes it extremely useful in nanochemistry. They coat nanotech used in medicine/surgeries in gold so it can be inserted into the human body.

>>10274012
weew this is worse than brainlet tier

It's 100% nonreactive and is malleable enough to be made tissue paper thin and easily adheres to solid objects.

It's the ultimate ideal anti-corrosion coating.
All blue water ships should be coated in gold to prevent reaction with salt-water.
If gold wasn't valued as currency, then every ship would be gold coated, and we'd have permanent sea-faring cities floating on the oceans by now.

>>10280147
Most likely not. The reason gold does this is because it has special electron properties that are only inherent within noble metals such as gold and platinum. The only thing that would actually be better would be room temperature superconductors but we don't even know if they are physically possible to make.

Graphene would be really close in performance to gold though.

>>10281514
But carbon is everywhere, thus getting a quality grade performing stuff from it should be cheaper and we can leave some gold for the spaceships.

>>10280277
Ships are already coated with corrosion resistant paint that works just fine. Also gold wouldn't stop barnacles from slowing ships down and requiring maintenance.

>>10276118
Woke af
Fort Knox bars were replaced with rectangular helium balloons under Nixon and Bush Sr. Got assassinated before he could make it public.

>>10274015
Theres the obvious scientific and industrial breakthroughs that this stupid shiny element initiated. Which has brought huge improvements to our knowledge and overall quality of life.

Can't believe it hasn't been mentioned, but due to the non-reactive nature of gold, ornaments and jewelry made from it are extremely resistant to tarnish and rust. Pure gold items will stay shiny and lustrous for centuries while goods made of silver or brass will require heavy polishing to keep their shine.

This gave gold a mystique of immortality, it outlived everything and everyone maintaining its glory and beauty across generations.

>>10283822
Most scientific or medical applications of gold require only a very small mass. There's nowhere near the demand that there is for iron

>>10276474
modern gold is basically valuable for the same reason bitcoin is
speculators just buy it because it is valuable and it is valuable because speculators buy it

>>10273966
>so say the aliens come and take all of the world's gold away tonight what would be the real problem for humans coping without gold tomorrow.
If the magic aliens warped out ALL the gold, planes would start falling out of the sky, the internet would shut down, the power grid would go out, some old folks and rappers would be in excruciating pain, and all sorts of other nasty stuff.

If they just took all the gold out of the ground for luls, I suppose we'd adapt. We could still artificially produce gold, it's just now, that costs way more than gold is worth, but on the other hand, we also don't *need* very much. There's not a lot of new gold being mined - most of it is recycled, so in the end, it really wouldn't change much. At least, not as much as the revelation there are aliens roaming the galaxy that, despite having near unlimited resources and the ability to teleport matter, seem to want huge quantities of gold.

The absolute fucking brainlets in this thread. Gold is fairly similar but does everything better than copper. It's has the exact same uses, but because of price it's stuck with high end aerospace stuff and nanotech.
If gold and copper were the same value take a guess what you'd be wiring your entire house with.

>>10275968
Helium is so not dense that it just floats out of the atmosphere and unlike Hydrogen it doesn't react with anything.

>>10273966
Use of it's malleability and conductivity.
Otherwise, it's main use is it's perception as something that is valuable. Basically, we believe it's valuable, therefore it is valuable.

This is why there were moves to the fiat currency... though that too had it's own issues, especially the more people realised that it was just paper worth nothing other than the value we believe it to hold.

>>10283950
So endangered on Earth?

>>10283967
Be more accurate to say extracting it is prohibitively expensive.

>>10283982
That's not endangered, that's just hard to get.

>>10283954
you need a course in basic economics, how do you think since gold was discovered, the exchange of currencies have happen? How do you think export/import of goods are happening today? Gold is essential in trade.

>>10284031
>you need a course in basic economics
I've had them and I walk aimlessly in circles in a desert of thought.

>how do you think since gold was discovered, the exchange of currencies have happen? How do you think export/import of goods are happening today? Gold is essential in trade.
It happened simply because people required a tool to communicate value. The circumstances for why it may have been most suitable tool of communication at the time has various reasons.