Futurology

Beltalowda

We have.

Would that really help though? Gold is super soft so I think it would need to get frequently coated/plated again

and we already have pretty good and resistant marine paint.

Titanium is very corrosion resistant, not to mention plastics/fiberglass/carbon fiber, as I understand.

But yeah, cheap gold would be be great, just seems to me that the market would more be in e.g. electronics, where both corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity are required (something gold is fairly unique at).

Microwave it.

https://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/doc/ARI/ARI%20Study%20Report/ACT-RPT-NRG-ARI-14-9301-microwave.pdf

https://news.mit.edu/2022/quaise-energy-geothermal-0628

Actually it's surviving the radiation outside the Van Allen belts.

they don't mine them. just process them. not sure it's lowering the cost of raw diamonds will change the processing cost.

its morning and haven't had my coffee, so I'm on instinct. I feel like it would lower the cost.

Because of nuclear physics.

Diamonds are just carbon atoms arranged in a particular repeating structure (a lattice). So you can go from, say, graphite to diamond without touching the atoms themselves.

Gold, on the other hand is not about structure, but the atomic cores themselves, which contain exactly 79 protons. Going from one type of atom to another type requires some form of fission (breaking larger cores into smaller pieces) or fusion (smashing two smaller cores together). I don't think there are (viable) fission "recipes" that yield gold. And fusion requires insanely high temperatures or pressures even for smaller atoms (were talking center of the sun here).

Alchemists have been trying for thousands of years, you're welcome to join them

they actually made gold from lead, in the hadron collider. but it was a few particles, and very unstable, still gold!

Diamonds are just Carbon atoms in Chrystal form.

You can take carbon from say coal, turn it into a Chrystal and you've got a diamond.

Gold is just gold atoms, you can't make gold atoms

I totally get where you're coming from—on the surface, it does seem absurd that so much effort, money, and even space tech is being directed toward chasing a shiny yellow metal that, in practical terms, doesn’t do much for human survival. It can’t feed us, shelter us, or cure disease. And yet, we’ve built entire economies and mythologies around it. But the strange part is, this isn’t unique to gold. It’s part of a much deeper pattern in human economic systems, especially in capitalism, where markets need some way to store and measure value—and that almost always leads societies to latch onto something rare, durable, and symbolic, whether it’s objectively useful or not.

In early societies, people used cowrie shells in the Pacific Islands, huge stone disks in Yap, salt in ancient Africa, and even tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic. These weren’t chosen because they had immense utility, but because they were scarce, hard to replicate, and symbolically powerful. They allowed people to trade across time and space. Capitalism, being based on decentralized exchange, competition, and accumulation, basically demands a store of value that everyone can agree on—even if the object itself is more symbolic than practical. Gold just happens to check all the boxes: it’s rare, doesn’t tarnish, can be melted and divided, and most importantly, it's extremely hard to counterfeit or mass-produce without massive energy investment.

If gold didn’t exist, we’d be doing the same thing with something else. In fact, that’s basically what happened with Bitcoin. People wanted a store of value outside the control of central banks, and they turned to something even more intangible—just math and energy. It’s the same pattern: we create artificial scarcity and give it value, because we need a common reference point to coordinate vast, impersonal economies.

Now, the asteroid mining thing? Yeah, it sounds wild. But from a capitalist perspective, it actually makes sense. If gold remains valuable, then any untapped supply—even in space—is a business opportunity. The fact that this seems grotesque when we think about all the hunger and suffering here on Earth is a painful contradiction, but it’s also part of the logic of capitalism. Capital doesn't naturally flow toward moral priorities like feeding people; it flows toward returns. And unless there are incentives or systemic shifts to redirect that flow, people will keep pursuing things like asteroid gold, because that’s where the value signal points.

So yeah, it’s kind of maddening. But it's not really about gold being useful—it's about human systems needing anchors of value. And gold, for all its impracticality, happens to be an anchor that capitalism can rally around.

It's universally obtainable but not in ridiculous volumes and not without effort and once obtained it's incredibly durable. It's essentially perfect for the job.

While I agree it is overvalued, what really put it into perspective for me is that all of the known gold in the world would fit into a cube with a side length of 20-25m.

So a fair price would be lower than what it is now, but it is scarce and its uses (corrosion resistance, conductivity, malleability, reflectivity, etc.) probably would still warrant a relatively high price.

Yeah, I just can't understand why people would pay more money for something that looks objectively nicer.

Fuck shiny polished gold, that is more easily made into jewelry, doesn't react with skin, compliments many gemstones, and doesn't significantly corrode, I want a pig iron wedding ring.

:)