# 30 foot cube of Gold **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 28, 2004, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922 "2004-08-28T06:51:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/21 "2004-08-29T16:01:48Z")
> [@t-keela](#): > > (how stuff works) **Wait a minute! 14cu’/year? = 82cu’/ever** NOT Why not? A cube that is 14’ on each side has a total volume of 2,744 cubic feet. And a cube that is 82’ on each side has a volume of 551,368 cubic feet. The 82’ cube thus contains 201 times as much gold as the 14’ cube. I don’t find it too difficult to believe that total world gold production is only 200x the annual gold production obtainable with late twentieth century technology. > [@t-keela](#): > > I could play this out for awhile but it is fairly obvious to me that the USGS and the great many others who cite the USGS are simply guessing. Sure they’re guessing, but they are educated guesses that take account of what _is_ known and that made reasonable estimates based on reasoonable inferences. None of the authorities cited ever claims that their figures are beyond question. > [@t-keela](#): > > The thousands of tons of gold stolen by Spain from Central and South America. You criticize the figures used by those people, but now you say “thousands of tons of gold stolen” without giving any basis for your own figures. > [@t-keela](#): > > Not included because for one it is considered an insignificant amount. Spain admitted having in excess of 400 tons at the minimum estimate. The Incas managed to salvage some 1500 tons of gold. The Mayans even more. Even if we doubled both those figures, that still gives a total of less that 4,000 tons of gold. Given that the total amount mined is being estimated at around 150,000 tons, that doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility. > [@t-keela](#): > > Either way, there’s no doubt that 30’cu. is too low. Actually, we got past the 30’ number some time ago. ---
**Author:** ![zippyh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/839c29/32.png) [@zippyh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zippyh)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/22 "2004-08-29T17:27:07Z")
Most gold that one encounters is an alloy too. That kinda messes up the intuitive guesses. According to this [http://www.attawaygems.com/NMFG/Gold\_data.html](http://www.attawaygems.com/NMFG/Gold_data.html) 14Kt gold is 39% gold by volume. 18kt gold is about 61% by volume. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/23 "2004-08-29T20:05:47Z")
Being a Trivia Master, I would have recognized this question and given gold as the proper anwer. But what if someone had decided to be clever and answered Seaborgium or Meitnerium (properly framed in the form of a question)? All of these elements that have ever been mined wouldn’t fill a paper cup much less a thirty foot cube. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/24 "2004-08-29T23:43:37Z")
I’d heard 30 yards, and there was a kitschy drawing of the cube sitting on a football field. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/25 "2004-08-30T00:21:32Z")
I think people in general don’t entirely understand how big 50 feet is, at least vertically. Sure, you can run fifty feet in a few seconds… but if you fell fifty feet, you’d get really, really hurt. A 50-foot cube would be humongous. Not nearly as large as a skyscraper or anything, but I mean, c’mon… it’s solid gold. 50 cubic feet of solid ANYTHING is a large chunk. ---
**Author:** ![MaryEFoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MaryEFoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaryEFoo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/26 "2004-08-30T06:05:42Z")
Per **t’keela** , a 15" cube would weigh a tonne. When my father was mining gold in the depression, in the Sonora/Jamestown/Angels Camp area, he would bring the week’s results down to the San Francisco Mint in his old Federal truck. The gold would make one or two bricks (ingots). He said he planned, if someone ever held him up, to hand over the gold which was startlingly heavy for its size, and jump the guy during the moment of startle. Actually I’m just as glad he didn’t get held up. Couple other tidbits. If they don’t count placer gold, they don’t count a lot. In the California gold country above Sacramento, they tunneled water through the Sierra to blast away the countryside with hydraulics, and took 50-100 feet and more of old alluvium off a **wide** area of countryside to get the gold. The tailings ran off into the Central Valley and covered up a lot of farmland before the farmers outpoliticked the miners and got that stuff made illegal. And they don’t count Spanish-American gold?! From a college history class, the quantity of gold in Europe was quadrupled from 1492 to (forget the time period)(could have been a century, could have been during the Spanish Empire period), as Western gold entered through Spain. They made the point it did European industrial development a world of good, but not Spanish ditto. ---
**Author:** ![MaryEFoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MaryEFoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaryEFoo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/27 "2004-08-30T06:08:30Z")
(Industrial development, cont’d) As a pimp once told me, that fast money don’t last. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/28 "2004-08-30T06:15:34Z")
Another thing to keep in mind, when looking at all the pretty jewelry in the stores, is that a lot of decorative gold has been mixed with silver, to make it harder. Not having ready knowledge of jewelry-making techniques, however, I don’t know how much this would offset the figures… ---
**Author:** ![Sean\_Factotum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922/29 "2004-08-30T12:28:14Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > But what if someone had decided to be clever and answered Seaborgium or Meitnerium (properly framed in the form of a question)? All of these elements that have ever been mined wouldn’t fill a paper cup much less a thirty foot cube. Especially since Meitnerium (Mt) and Seaborgium (Sg) have half-lives so short that they don’t exist in a natural state, and therefore probably have never been mined in any measurable quantity at all. Both were first identified when created in particle accelerators, with Mt starting alpha-decay within 5 milliseconds, and Sg has a measured t 1/2 of .9 =/- .2 seconds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-foot-cube-of-gold/261922.md?page=1)