The best estimates currently available suggest that around 208,874 tonnes of gold has been mined throughout history, of which around two-thirds has been mined since 1950. And since gold is virtually indestructible, this means that almost all of this metal is still around in one form or another.
Some estimates go as high as 1 million tons but most experts would agree that under 200,000 is accurate. World gold supplies are difficult to quantify. That is because gold reserves are not always reported accurately. Over 50% of gold above ground is used for jewellery which makes it difficult to track.
Oceans are the greatest single reservoir of gold at Earth's surface, containing approximately eight times the total quantity of gold mined to date.
Satellite imaging has shown that the top 10 centimetres of regolith (moon soil) at the south pole of the moon appear to hold about 100 times more gold than the richest mines on earth. Only a few years ago, most geologists would have laughed at the idea of mining anything from our moon.
From this perspective, a total of around 190,000 tonnes of gold has been mined like mentioned before, although these numbers vary. According to these approximate figures, there is still about 20% of the world's gold that needs to be mined.
Australia is estimated to have the world's largest gold reserves, with 9,500 tonnes or 17 per cent of the total world estimated gold reserves of 57,000 tonnes.
In fact, the global demand for gold hit a decade peak in 2022 while its supply continues its nearly 7-year plateau. So gold is in high demand, but will it run out any time soon? The Earth has a limited amount of gold in its crust and experts are estimating that it may be unsustainable to mine gold by 2050.
Unlike most rocky, icy asteroids, the Psyche asteroid—located between Mars and Jupiter—contains a motherlode of metal, including gold, iron, and nickel.
If you were hoping make your fortune mining the sea, consider this: Gold in the ocean is so dilute that its concentration is very small. One study found there is only about one gram of gold for every 100 million metric tons of ocean water in the Atlantic and north Pacific.
In addition, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, niobium, molybdenum, lanthanum, europium, tungsten, and gold have been found in trace amounts.
In Australia this concentration of gold took place in the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago in the eastern states, and thousands of millions of years ago in Western Australia. As well as gold, the fluids can carry other dissolved minerals, such as quartz. This is why gold is often found with quartz.
Cadia Mine in New South Wales, was the largest gold-producing mine in Australia, producing approximately 764.9 thousand ounces of gold and an estimated 32.5 million metric tons per annum (mmtpa) of Run-of-Mine (ROM) in 2021.
The gold in the Klondike is known as orogenic gold. The word “orogenic” refers to a mountain-building event. Orogenic gold is gold that formed during a mountain-building event. Mountain-building events generate large amounts of heat and pressure, so oftentimes metamorphism will accompany this process.
A group of experts have concluded that the current increased production rate will lead to the depletion of some finite resources, including gold. Just how scarce are our gold reserves? Well, a group of scientists have set a date for the disappearance of the rare metal, and that is just 27 years away, in 2050.
Considered by most authorities to be the biggest gold nugget ever found, the Welcome Stranger was found at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, in 1869 by John Deason and Richard Oates. It weighed gross, over 2,520 troy ounces (78 kg; 173 lb) and returned over 2,284 troy ounces (71.0 kg; 156.6 lb) net.
The oceans hold $771 trillion worth of gold. Scientists estimate that the oceans of the world contain approximately 20 million tons of gold, in the water itself. More specifically, in tiny particles of approximately 13 billionths of a gram per liter.
(Fun fact: Real gold is not magnetic.) Fake gold, on the other hand, will stick to the magnet.
According to ACS, there is approximately 700 trillion dollars worth of gold in seawater. Ultimately, however, it would cost more to extract the gold than it is worth.
Eventually, scientists calculated that the Sun contains almost 2.5 trillion tons of gold, enough to fill Earth's oceans and more. Still, that's just eight atoms of gold for every trillion atoms of hydrogen — a tiny amount when compared to the mass of the Sun.
Gold may occur as deposits called lodes, or veins, in fractured rock. It may also be dispersed within Earth's crust. Most lode deposits form when heated fluids circulate through gold-bearing rocks, picking up gold and concentrating it in new locations in the crust.
Technically speaking, Dirk Schulze‑Makuch and Jacob Heinz didn't find oil. Rather, they found organic compounds called “thiophenes” that are also present in crude oil, coal, and truffles.
Some of the veins produce up to one quarter of an ounce of gold per ton of rock. What makes Dahlonega gold so different from other gold found around the world is the purity. Dahlonega has the purest gold in the world, which is 98.7 percent pure.
All the gold that's ever been mined would fit into a cube with edges 22 meters long — small enough to fit into three Olympic-sized swimming pools. Each year, miners and pawnbrokers add another 4,000 to 5,000 metric tons to an existing 197,576 ton pile, but jewelry demand alone uses up about half of that.
Adding or removing protons from a nucleus are types of nuclear reactions. As such, no series of chemical reactions can ever create gold.