What happens to prices when gold is manmade? Just like diamonds are now lab grown..

ScarsdaleCoin

Interesting thought ....

Scientists turn lead into gold for 1st time

see recent news article

yosclimber

Interesting for the physics, but it still looks like it's a long way from being a process that produces permanent gold.

lkenefic

They managed to produce picogram quantities of gold... 10^-12... one trillionth of one gram... is this going to be scalable in out lifetimes?

airplanenut

I'm sure in large part it would depend on how much the process costs. Ignoring the super high cost of an infant process, if this ever becomes "easy" to do, does it cost $5 to make an ounce, or $2000? If the former, tons of gold would be made to the point where I bet prices would drop. If it's $2000 (or any significant cost, but still lower than the going rate for gold) then price wouldn't drop nearly as much.

I imagine gold would be harder to distinguish lab-made from mined compared to diamonds, though I understand even diamonds are getting harder to distinguish. I'll bet an ounce of man-made gold that we don't see this process effective to the extent of having an appreciable influence on the market in our lifetimes.

coinbuf

It will depend on if you can determine or distinguish between the two the way you can with diamonds. With diamonds you have a tiered pricing structure with natural diamonds costing more. I would expect the same dynamic to occur assuming you can differentiate between the natural and lab created gold.

Sapyx

To be more specific, they are making minuscule quantities of radioactive gold, the isotope gold-203, which has a half-life of about a minute. This is what the article means when it says "each atom only exists for a tiny fraction of a second before breaking apart.". The only stable isotope of gold is gold-197, and no-one has successfully reported making any of that yet. To turn an atom of lead-204 into an atom of gold-197, you would need to simultaneously knock out 3 protons plus a bunch of neutrons, not just one proton at a time. And if one were to magically create a visible lump of gold-203, it would liquefy before your eyes as it spontaneously decayed into mercury-203. Then your eyes would probably liquefy from all that radiation flying around.

Constructing a piece of gold one atom at a time in a particle accelerator is never going to be an economically viable way to produce gold in bulk quantities. Gold from asteroids, or gold from seawater, will both remain more productive and profitable sources of gold than nuclear transmutation for at least the next dozen millennia.

{edited to fix science: it's 3 protons, not 5}

Old_Collector

The process will be massively expensive, so you can make gold at 250,000 an ounce.
Nice experiment but it is meaningless in the real world.

cinque1543

I consider it more likely, though still unlikely in our lifetimes, that a future business will find a way to mine gold from asteroids.

CaptHenway

@Sapyx said:
To be more specific, they are making minuscule quantities of radioactive gold, the isotope gold-203, which has a half-life of about a minute. This is what the article means when it says "each atom only exists for a tiny fraction of a second before breaking apart.". The only stable isotope of gold is gold-197, and no-one has successfully reported making any of that yet. To turn an atom of lead-204 into an atom of gold-197, you would need to simultaneously knock out 5 protons plus a bunch of neutrons, not just one proton at a time. And if one were to magically create a visible lump of gold-203, it would liquefy before your eyes as it spontaneously decayed into mercury-203. Then your eyes would probably liquefy from all that radiation flying around.

Constructing a piece of gold one atom at a time in a particle accelerator is never going to be an economically viable way to produce gold in bulk quantities. Gold from asteroids, or gold from seawater, will both remain more productive and profitable sources of gold than nuclear transmutation for at least the next dozen millennia.

This. It is not cost effective.

The 1950’s TV show “Superman” had an episode where a scientist invented a machine that could create gold, and Superman had to rescue him from the bad guys who kidnapped him and his machine. Afterwards he was explaining to Lois Lane how the machine worked, and he said “To make an ounce of gold you start out with an ounce of platinum (which at the time was worth more than gold) and do ….” when Lois interrupts and says “But that means you lose money!” and he says “Oh yes. I’m just doing this for the Science of it!”

Mr_Spud

If someone does figure out a way to make lots of gold cheaply, then either they would have to limit the distribution like DaBeers did with diamonds to fix the price high or it would turn into a commodity like what happened with aluminum which was worth more than gold in the 1800’s until they developed the cheap process to refine it.

TwoSides2aCoin

Back to the mine with picks, axes, and shovels. Science and AI can keep trying.

privatecoin

We're better off aiming to mine asteroids.

Smudge

Wasn’t there a Twilight Zone episode about that?

tincup

what they haven't mentioned... is the amount of other radioactive materials that were likely created in the machine, and the large amounts of energy needed to do the process. Along with the micro amounts created, I don't think there will be any need to be concerned about an oversupply of gold from this method! Just because something can be done.... doesn't mean it 'should' be done, or if it can be done in a economical way.

BWR (boiling water reactors) nuclear power plants routinely create Ag110, but again tiny amounts, and in this case.... it radioactively decays so does not stay around for a long time.

PeakRarities

Agree with the more likely dilution of gold supply coming from asteroids, or possibly mars or other planets.

Diamonds are a bit different, though the supply was controlled by Debeers, Governments of other countries don't stockpile diamonds. If there were ever With so many different Governments around the world heavily invested in gold,, there's a substantial incentive to prevent the dilution of supply. At that, it's unlikely we'd ever even know if/when we have started to successfully mine gold from asteroids or another planet. Any whistleblower or company who tried to publicly reveal such a thing would probably get the Epstein/Boeing whistleblower treatment. The way I look at it, any type of asset that the Government has mutual interest in, is generally a safe asset for me to have an interest in .

Sapyx

@airplanenut said:
I imagine gold would be harder to distinguish lab-made from mined compared to diamonds, though I understand even diamonds are getting harder to distinguish.
@coinbuf said:
It will depend on if you can determine or distinguish between the two the way you can with diamonds. With diamonds you have a tiered pricing structure with natural diamonds costing more. I would expect the same dynamic to occur assuming you can differentiate between the natural and lab created gold.

In the hypothetical event of "synthetic gold" entering the market in bulk, or even some other high-supply-high-expense gold source (such as "seawater gold" or "asteroid gold"), there is a core difference between gold and diamonds: gold needs to be heavily refined and processed to be turned into the final product everybody wants, but diamonds don't. Find a diamond in the ground, polish it up, and it's good to go. But there are essentially no places left on Earth where you can walk along and be likely to pick up a bunch of gold nuggets just sitting there on the ground, and even if you do find a gold nugget, it's not going to be .999 pure gold. The ore from even the richest and most productive gold mine has less than half an ounce of gold per tonne of crushed rock, it needs to be heavily refined and processed to acquire anything that resembles a piece of gold.

And the need for that refining process can, in all likelihood, remove or mask any distinctive signature contaminants from the gold that denotes it's origin. After all, .9999 gold is .9999 gold, who would care what the other .0001 is or where it came from?

The things that might become valuable in that far-future era would be any surviving natural gold nuggets, and pieces of gold-veined quartz, or some other rock with gold-bearing mineral veins in it. For such things cannot form from seawater gold, and asteroid gold would have a completely different mineral matrix quite unlike the gold-bearing minerals on Earth. And by that far-future time, almost all the actual mineral gold on earth is likely to have been refined and destroyed.

jmlanzaf

@ScarsdaleCoin said:
Interesting thought ....

Scientists turn lead into gold for 1st time

see recent news article

This was originally done 30 or 40 years ago with a slightly different process. It will NEVER affect the gold market because the cost is astronomical.

CommemDude

If they find a way to make gold we are all screwed because there will be no real money anymore and bitcoin will be the only thing left that exists in truly limited supply. Back to tulip bulbs at that point.

jmlanzaf

@Old_Collector said:
The process will be massively expensive, so you can make gold at 250,000 an ounce.
Nice experiment but it is meaningless in the real world.

250,000 an ounce would be cheap. Accelerator runs cost tens of thousands of dollars. Making even 1000 atoms (10x what the article reports) would give you a cost in the neighborhood of $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 per ounce.

And, no, you can't make the process cheaper because of the huge energy costs involved.

jmlanzaf

@coinbuf said:
It will depend on if you can determine or distinguish between the two the way you can with diamonds. With diamonds you have a tiered pricing structure with natural diamonds costing more. I would expect the same dynamic to occur assuming you can differentiate between the natural and lab created gold.

While true, the man-made diamonds have significantly dropped the market price of natural diamonds.

1Mike1

I would guess it's more likely gold will be mined in space before we can hope to produce it in a lab.

GRANDAM

@1Mike1 said:
I would guess it's more likely gold will be mined in space before we can hope to produce it in a lab.

Yes, and we could breed a race of genetically modified workers to do the mining for us,,,,, they would need to be bigger,,, stronger,,, dumber,,,,, and have BIG FEET to help them walk easier on other planets.

JoeLewis

@Smudge said:
Wasn’t there a Twilight Zone episode about that?

Yes! A group of thieves (and a scientist who developed a way to one-way travel to the future) steal a bunch of gold and travel to the future with it to escape getting caught. Once they got to the future, they found out that the gold was worthless because man-made gold was very common.

SIowhand

I’m guessing one day, the alchemist dream will come true.

And the same thing will happen that has occurred with diamonds. Lab grown diamonds are as real as any Diamond ever mined. And can essentially be made to be indistinguishable. Yet, here we are. The mined Diamond trade is still being propped up.

It’s fun to think about the number of lab grown diamonds that have been mixed into the mined diamond trade without disclosure.

OnlyGoldIsMoney

Creating a molecular structure (diamond or other gemstone) is far simpler that converting one element into another. That's why they are called elements.

Clackamas1

Gold is being created everyday throughout the universe between neutron stars, we could not make any appreciable amount. Bitcoin however is truly man made.

Cougar1978

Once belters mine gold from certain asteroids with lots of gold todays gold prices / coins will be in free fall.

dpsht

Making Gold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvQcrpGq1y0

GoldFinger1969

@CaptHenway said:
The 1950’s TV show “Superman” had an episode where a scientist invented a machine that could create gold, and >Superman had to rescue him from the bad guys who kidnapped him and his machine. Afterwards he was explaining >to Lois Lane how the machine worked, and he said “To make an ounce of gold you start out with an ounce of >platinum (which at the time was worth more than gold) and do ….” when Lois interrupts and says “But that means >you lose money!” and he says “Oh yes. I’m just doing this for the Science of it!”

A Twilight Zone episode had a bunch of guys steal gold....hide it....go into hibernation....and then awaken in the future when it would appreciate (probably when everybody left the gold standard and fixed pricing of gold ). Of course, they turned on one another and only 1 guy was left at the end. By show's end, we learned that in the future gold was easily man-made and not worth anything.

I remember the episode because it had Simon Oakland, who I loved as an actor growing up from his many guest appearances on TV shows in the 1960's and 1970's, including KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER.

Cougar1978

Yes / They will tank. Game over. Better hurry and take your profits.

I think eventually tech will find a way whether mining from the asteroid belt or some advanced tech mine it in bulk. Sell out now?

JBK

@GoldFinger1969 said:

@CaptHenway said:
The 1950’s TV show “Superman” had an episode where a scientist invented a machine that could create gold, and >Superman had to rescue him from the bad guys who kidnapped him and his machine. Afterwards he was explaining >to Lois Lane how the machine worked, and he said “To make an ounce of gold you start out with an ounce of >platinum (which at the time was worth more than gold) and do ….” when Lois interrupts and says “But that means >you lose money!” and he says “Oh yes. I’m just doing this for the Science of it!”

A Twilight Zone episode had a bunch of guys steal gold....hide it....go into hibernation....and then awaken in the future when it would appreciate (probably when everybody left the gold standard and fixed pricing of gold ). Of course, they turned on one another and only 1 guy was left at the end. By show's end, we learned that in the future gold was easily man-made and not worth anything.

I remember the episode because it had Simon Oakland, who I loved as an actor growing up from his many guest appearances on TV shows in the 1960's and 1970's, including KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER.

The name didn't ring a bell so I looked him up. He was one of the great character actors of the era.

And I think I recall that Twilight Zone episode.

FriendlyEagle7

@lkenefic said:
They managed to produce picogram quantities of gold... 10^-12... one trillionth of one gram... is this going to be scalable in out lifetimes?

I studied physics. This will never be scalable, it takes absurd amounts of energy. Even if gold became very expensive, and energy very cheap, you could just mine asteroids for gold and other platinum group metals at far lower cost than doing this.

AUandAG

It would be outlawed, world wide. Most countries have a considerable amount of gold reserves and that would be a threat for sure.

bob

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PerryHall

@FriendlyEagle7 said:

@lkenefic said:
They managed to produce picogram quantities of gold... 10^-12... one trillionth of one gram... is this going to be scalable in out lifetimes?

I studied physics. This will never be scalable, it takes absurd amounts of energy. Even if gold became very expensive, and energy very cheap, you could just mine asteroids for gold and other platinum group metals at far lower cost than doing this.

Totally agree. Gold is an element and can't be manufactured from a base metal such as lead without rearranging or otherwise altering the atomic structure of the base metal.