Stephen Alan's Jewellers - The Jewellery Blog

You might be wearing some gold right now. Maybe some gold earrings, a gold ring or a gold chain. But have you ever wondered where that gold came from, why it’s golden, or how much of the stuff there actually is in the world?

In this short article for the Stephen Alan’s Jewellery Blog, we thought we’d give you a few facts about gold (including the answers to those mentioned above), some that you might already know, and some that even surprised us.

We hope you enjoy the helpful list of 5 gold facts we’ve put together, and if you do, we’d love it if you gave it a share to let others know a few things about gold, that they might not have known before.

Gold Fact 1 – Gold came from space

It’s true! Gold came from space. And to add a little science – it happened when two neutron stars collided, which as well as sending out waves of unimaginable energy, also created a shedload of heavy elements (including gold) many of which headed for Earth.

Then… being such heavy elements, as they came down to Earth most sank deep into the core, where coincidently it’s estimated that 99% (1.6 quadrillion tons) of the Earths gold is still buried.

Gold Fact 2 – The sun contains a lot of gold

Staying in space for a moment – the suns ‘corona’, or the outermost part of its atmosphere is now thought to be a ring of ultra-thin gas which ‘captures’ the heavy elements, including gold, created when neuron stars collide.

To bring this into simpler terms, the sun now contains around 2.5 trillion tons of gold, which works out at a measly eight atoms of gold for every trillion atoms of hydrogen, but still enough to fill all the Earth's oceans plus a lot more.

Gold Fact 3 – Our human eyes make gold gold

OK, let’s break this down – gold is the only truly yellow metal that exists on Earth, but as humans, we see that yellow colour as golden, and the reason for this anomaly, comes down to how fast its electrons move and how fast they shift the wavelength of light.

To put it a little simpler – in an act of relativistic contraction, the electrons that make up golds outer shell reflect electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength near 600 nm, the type of radiation the human eye naturally sees as bright yellow, or more aptly, gold.

Gold Fact 4 – 1 ounce of gold can be stretched 50 miles!

It’s no secret, gold is exceptionally malleable – think gold leaf. And, to expand on that statement, in theory, 1 ounce of gold beaten into a very thin sheet would measure an astonishing 100 square feet, which also means, you’d only need 576 ounces of gold to cover an entire football pitch!

This malleability of gold also makes it extremely ductile, which basically means it’s easy to stretch it into wire. And, again, to ‘stretch’ this statement – just 1 ounce of gold, if made into wire 5 microns (5 millionths of a metre) thick, would measure around 50 miles long!

Gold Fact 5 – 60 tractor trailers could hold all the gold in the world

Although it might seem like a lot, the total amount of gold ever mined worldwide is just 152,000 metric tons, which works out to about 60 tractor trailers worth. To put that amount further into perspective – in comparison, every year worldwide, we mine 907 million metric tons of iron.

Also, a massive 90% of gold we have today wasn’t mined until after 1848, a period better known as ‘the gold rush’, when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California which saw around 300,000 people travel across the United States in search of their fortune.

Need some gold valued?

At Stephen Alan's Jewellers, we provide valuations for all types of jewellery, including gold jewellery. Find out more here, or give us call during working hours on 01525 373177.