SCIENCE FACT OF THE DAY • Oceans Of Gold

… but it’s too difficult to extract it! Almost all of the precious metal is just floating around in seawater and is spread throughout the ocean in mere parts per trillion. As the National Ocean Service puts it:

"Each litre of seawater contains, on average, about 13 billionths of a gram of gold."

Although it doesn’t sound like much, gold is gold, and ever since British chemist Edward Sonstadt discovered in 1872 that “the oceans are filled with gold”, people tried to capitalise on it. Needless to say, I don’t blame them. Based on today’s price of gold, which is about $41 USD per gram, the total amount of gold in the ocean would be worth roughly $744 trillion. That’s right, TRILLION! That’s a whole lot of money to made…if you’re up for the task.

If you're interested and want to learn more about gold, click here.

Follow me for your daily dose of science!

---

Source
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gold-ocean-sea-hoax-science-water-boom-rush-treasure
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF03215023.pdf

---

Picture taken from pixabay.com and edited by myself