# Amount of gold in the universe **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 20, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025 "2004-07-20T17:11:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/21 "2004-07-22T00:11:02Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > Actually, **Chronos** was being conservative. A figure of over 150 billion light years is now being touted. [Here is a nice, readable explanation](http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html). You aren’t kidding, that is an excellent link. Thanks much for posting it. ---
**Author:** ![Dancer\_Flight](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dancer_flight/32/7601_2.png) [@Dancer\_Flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dancer_Flight)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/22 "2004-07-22T06:06:54Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > I have no idea how one would go about calculating this, but what would be the largest sphere of gold you could have, and still have 99.99% of it stay gold for a billion years or so? It has to be small enough that it doesn’t heat up to stellar temperatures so no appreciable fusion/fission is going on. Let’s assume our gold mass is in intergalactic space so it won’t be picking up any appreciable space dust or comets, ignore all that. We wouldn’t want any hideous water oceans on our lovely gold planet, would we? > > Once we’ve calculated the largest mass that would allow stable gold, we could calculate the size and surface gravity of the thing. Simple Answer: 1.3 solar masses is the limit for electron degeneracy support (normal matter, any larger and you get a neutron star). This is about 2.6x10[sup]30[/sup]kg. This would be the original Chandrasekhar limit by the way. -DF ---
**Author:** ![Achilles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dc4da7/32.png) [@Achilles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achilles)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/23 "2004-07-22T13:50:36Z")
> [@Q.E.D.](#): > > Considering that much money doesn’t actually exist, yes. But I did say at current market rates. **Q.E.D.** I think the point was that if there was _that_ much gold available, y’know, floating along in a big cube, it wouldn’t be worth jack shit. Except if you sold the cube as a collectors item, but then you’d proabably have to pay for it with all the silver in the universe - and that’s just silly. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ponster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponster/32/17081_2.png) [@Ponster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponster)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/24 "2004-07-22T14:25:59Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Factoid - term commonly used to indicate a piece of trivia, originally means a fact erroneously reported by a newspaper. [hijack] Factoid as a piece of trivia is IMHO only used by those exposed to it in this sense. Those of us that don’t have access to MTV/CNN, and have not been exposed to news items with the word ‘FACTOID’ flashed across the screen, still use the word to mean ‘an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print’. Or maybe I’m just getting old 🙂 [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/25 "2004-07-22T21:15:53Z")
> [@Achilles](#): > > **Q.E.D.** I think the point was that if there was _that_ much gold available, y’know, floating along in a big cube, it wouldn’t be worth jack shit. Except if you sold the cube as a collectors item, but then you’d proabably have to pay for it with all the silver in the universe - and that’s just silly. > > 😃 Not to mention the shipping yould kill you. Even by ground. DD ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025/26 "2004-07-22T21:17:19Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But I’m not sure if increasing temperatures would be more likely to cause transferric elements to fission. I didn’t do any math, but my intuition tells me you’d have degenerate matter before you got that much gravitational energy. One of the actual physicists could probably give an accurate answer, though. > [@Achilles](#): > > Q.E.D. I think the point was that if there was that much gold available, y’know, floating along in a big cube, it wouldn’t be worth jack shit. Except if you sold the cube as a collectors item, but then you’d proabably have to pay for it with all the silver in the universe - and that’s just silly. T’ain’t no cube that big!! It’d be a sphere when it was many orders of magnitude less massive than **Chronos’** mega-auric blob. [Hyperion](http://www.nineplanets.org/hyperion.html), one of Saturn’s moons, is the largest non-spherical body in the solar system, and it’s only about 1.77e19 kg. Anything much larger becomes more or less spherical due to gravity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-gold-in-the-universe/256025.md?page=1)