Topic: If mining asteroids becomes commonplace is any element rare enough to be money? - page 3. (Read 4259 times)
March 16, 2014, 10:23:03 PM
Same thing with diamonds, there's a lot of them hidden below but we're not advanced enough to extract them efficiently.
March 16, 2014, 08:26:45 PM
we may have to shift to using isotopically pure elements.
http://www.curiousnotions.com/home/metals.asp
i wonder if there is a reasonable way of verifying the "isotopically pure" claim.
http://www.curiousnotions.com/home/metals.asp
Quote
So what you’re looking for is an element that’s extremely scarce in parts per billion, and an isotope of it that’s of such a tiny proportion that the product of both numbers is the smallest of any earthly substance.
Osmium comes in seven stable isotopes, and among them osmium-184 is the rarest at 0.02%. That times the element’s 1.8 parts per billion equals about a half part per trillion. But as mentioned above, osmium’s not the nicest stuff to deal with. Plus, although you can correct me if I'm wrong, no one seems to have a creditable price for 184Os.
For a far more serviceable candidate we don’t have to look far. Platinum comes in stable isotopes 190, 192, 194, 195, 196, and 198. Among those, the scarcest is 190, whose natural occurrence is 0.014%. If platinum as a whole exists at 7.5 ppb in the earth’s crust, 190Pt would be 0.014% of that: 0.00105 ppb or about one part per trillion. Therefore, isotopically pure platinum-190 is the most precious metal in the world.
Osmium comes in seven stable isotopes, and among them osmium-184 is the rarest at 0.02%. That times the element’s 1.8 parts per billion equals about a half part per trillion. But as mentioned above, osmium’s not the nicest stuff to deal with. Plus, although you can correct me if I'm wrong, no one seems to have a creditable price for 184Os.
For a far more serviceable candidate we don’t have to look far. Platinum comes in stable isotopes 190, 192, 194, 195, 196, and 198. Among those, the scarcest is 190, whose natural occurrence is 0.014%. If platinum as a whole exists at 7.5 ppb in the earth’s crust, 190Pt would be 0.014% of that: 0.00105 ppb or about one part per trillion. Therefore, isotopically pure platinum-190 is the most precious metal in the world.
i wonder if there is a reasonable way of verifying the "isotopically pure" claim.
March 16, 2014, 08:24:06 PM
This is the thing a lot of precious metal advocates haven't really considered, gold and silver certainly are rare metals on Earth but you're correct, there are actually recorded cases of asteroids being found that contain trillions worth of metals in them. If this amount of metal flooded the market then these metals wouldn't be considered rare anymore and you'd have to look for something else that's rarer, but this is why I consider cryptocurrencies to actually be a very good for currencies, the only downside to them really is you need an internet connection and they aren't physical.
Precious metals work great for now but if we get the hang of space flight they'll be about as common as copper, unless of course we discover and entirely new material we haven't seen before that's rarer than gold or some other metal.
Precious metals work great for now but if we get the hang of space flight they'll be about as common as copper, unless of course we discover and entirely new material we haven't seen before that's rarer than gold or some other metal.
i dont think crypto is a great solution either. crypto is great for moving value and for speculating, its a useful tool for a lot of things, but i dont think one of them is "savings". atleast not to me. Its not really rare. Someone can always invent a better crypto (cough nxt) but its just a matter of time before someone invents something better than nxt. bitcoin is rare in the sense that you cant make new bitcoin but not in the same way as a precious metal. you cant just copy gold and make DogeGold.
March 16, 2014, 08:07:05 PM
This is the thing a lot of precious metal advocates haven't really considered, gold and silver certainly are rare metals on Earth but you're correct, there are actually recorded cases of asteroids being found that contain trillions worth of metals in them. If this amount of metal flooded the market then these metals wouldn't be considered rare anymore and you'd have to look for something else that's rarer, but this is why I consider cryptocurrencies to actually be a very good for currencies, the only downside to them really is you need an internet connection and they aren't physical.
Precious metals work great for now but if we get the hang of space flight they'll be about as common as copper, unless of course we discover and entirely new material we haven't seen before that's rarer than gold or some other metal.
Precious metals work great for now but if we get the hang of space flight they'll be about as common as copper, unless of course we discover and entirely new material we haven't seen before that's rarer than gold or some other metal.
March 16, 2014, 07:56:20 PM
One of the reasons i bought bitcoin is because i was worried about the possibility of asteroid mining. I have been told that a single captured asteroid could potentially double the supply of gold or silver. This would make these elements essentially worthless as money. You wouldn't be strong enough to carry enough to buy something with them. So then my question is, if this were to happen would something like iridium be rare enough to still allow value to be portable even under these circumstances?
That is a very good question and I have no idea.
My $.02.
March 16, 2014, 07:54:04 PM
One of the reasons i bought bitcoin is because i was worried about the possibility of asteroid mining. I have been told that a single captured asteroid could potentially double the supply of gold or silver. This would make these elements essentially worthless as money. You wouldn't be strong enough to carry enough to buy something with them. So then my question is, if this were to happen would something like iridium or osmium be rare enough to still allow value to be portable even under these circumstances?
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