12 astonishing things about gold

From the Perth Mint blog

Here are 12 astonishing features we’ve found cited about precious gold:

• Gold is made in supernovas – massive cosmic explosions that hurl out materials which gather together to form planets.
• Most of Earth’s gold is buried too deep to be recoverable.
• Gold nearer the surface is the result of meteorites storms that bombarded Earth after it was formed.
• The abundance of gold in the Earth’s crust is 0.004 parts per million.
• The world’s oceans are estimated to hold up to 15,000 tonnes of gold.
• Since the dawn of humankind, less than 172,000 tonnes of gold have ever been mined.
• Every tonne of recovered gold would fit into a box of 20 metres cubed.
• These days, it is not unusual for 10 or more tonnes of rock to be mined to get 1oz of gold.
• Gold is extraordinarily dense – a cubic foot weighs half a ton, making it almost twice as heavy as lead.
• Gold is highly malleable and ductile – 1oz of pure gold can be beaten into a sheet measuring nine square metres or drawn into a wire 80 kilometres long.
• Gold nanoparticles thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair are used in medicine.
• The average human body contains 7 milligrams of gold.