3 ms·
As far as the theft of gold from the Ethiopian bank, an inside replacement job is probably the only possibility. There is no way that all of the bank officials
by donw 19y ago
As far as the theft of gold from the Ethiopian bank, an inside replacement job is probably the only possibility. There is no way that all of the bank officials, assayers/chemists, and so on could work together on that kind of conspiracy.
Very, very interesting article.
- mrtron 19y agoInteresting article - however I am more interested in how to make real gold bars generally speaking. Although I suppose the first step is making the fake bars...
- marvin 19y agoIf you could somehow create a cheap and powerful particle accelerator, gold could concievably be produced in macroscopic amounts by irradiating mercury-198 (10% by mass in naturally occuring mercury) with 6.8MeV gamma rays. There are other ways of doing it, but economics and practicality needs to be considered. It is probably easier to build a badass particle accelerator than a nuclear reactor. I am reasonably sure that most modern accelerator laboratories have done this experiment, but it is probably not economical with today's accelerators. (And imagine the capital costs!) This seems a very lucrative target for aspiring physicists. At a point in time this will probably become practical, but there will only be a small window in which it is economical to do so: once it becomes possible to perform large-scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply.
- jcl 19y agoonce it becomes possible to perform large-scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply. I suppose it depends on the economics and politics as much as the science. I notice that diamonds are still expensive, even though we can readily synthesize them.
- mhb 19y agoWell, yeah. That's why it says that in the article.