I once read that all the gold mined by man would fit in two olympic sized swimming pools. Have we found and mined all of it? How likely is a new, major gold strike (like the strike at Sutter’s Mill in California)?
Has gold been found in unlikely places?
I also recall seeing that there was a minor gold strike, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (in the 1880’s)-is it likely that there is any more gold in the USA?
Gold mining still goes on in the US, with about 250 metric tons of gold produced last year. I don’t know if you’re going to see many more major strikes, and I think the US has seen peak gold, but with new technology, we can get more gold out of existing sites.
The primary gold producer in the US is Nevada.
I think we’re over gold now. DeBeers can’t create an artificial value for gold like they can for diamonds.
The fact that people still get all in a huff over certain materials because “ooh, shiny” amuses me to no end.
For any mineral, other than a very few deep mines in places like South Africa, we’re usually only mining the uppermost several hundred feet of the surface of the Earth. In other words, we’re getting at the really easy, really obvious stuff.
There’s probably plenty of gold in Russia. Something that has been done for 20 or 30 years now is to process the tailings of worked-out gold mines. Guy I worked for had an interest in it in Peru back in the 80s. The old methods lost a lot of gold dust that could not be extracted from the general waste but chemically it can be now and is.
Except that gold has a significant number of non-“ooh, shiny” industrial uses and, unlike diamonds, is actually relatively rare and cannot be made artificially.
Nope. Not even close, according to this article:
Excellent. Now all I have to do is build a machine that can process a billion liters a day and wait for four billion years to earn my money.
Good things come to those who wait.
Not even close. The amount still in the Witwatersrand is probably equal to what’s already been taken out. It’s a question of what’s economical/profitable to mine. Mines here reopen and close as the gold price shifts.
Well, there’s always Antartica…
Has gold been found in unlikely places?
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I remember quite some excitement around 1991 about the gold content in black smokers. Apparently, this may be the original provenance of many smaller gold deposits.
It’s a big country. It’s probable. Not a major deposit, though.
People like their bling. Always have, always will.
The fact that there are still people clamoring to return to an economic system based on how much shiny metal you can dig out of the ground or trade is equally amusing.
Theree is really not a debate, here.
Off to General Questions.
The amount of gold used for z0mgSHINY!!!1111 purposes is a tiny, tiny fraction of the gold mined in the world.
Really? I know that it’s used for wiring and probably other things but I’d still have thought that bling of various sorts would still account for a sizable minority if not the majority of gold usage.
No way. Its probably closer to two Mt. Fujis.
I was seized by a desire to work out the volume of 250 metric tonnes of gold. It looks like it would be a cube around 2.35 meters on a side, or seven foot eight inches.
So - it’s big, but I could conceivably pile up all that gold in my bedroom. Whether the bedroom floor could handle 250 metric tonnes is a seperate question though. 
In addition to wires, gold is used as a solder in some applications, as a coloring agent for glass, as electromagnetic shielding for spacecraft, as a conductive alloy to coat biological specimens, in your teeth, in radioactive isotope form for certain types of medical imaging, as a lubricant in certain high-precision machinery, and as an excellent brand name for pretzels.
But on further consideration, I’m probably overstating things by saying only a “tiny, tiny fraction” of gold is used in jewelry. It’s probably a more significant number, though I can’t seem to find a good source of gold usage statistics.
Zactly what I thought.
But I have to ask, is that an actual number ? If not, does someone want to calculate it ?