All The Gold In The World In A Cube

All The World’s Gold

We hither at Expensivity are all about exploring the earth of numbers, and with this infographic we decided to take a look at the numbers behind the unabridged amount of gold in the earth likewise every bit other facts about gilded. Below are a series of questions that we began with and the answers we discovered in our research. Nosotros believe that this is the about thorough and in-depth resources with facts about the world’southward gilt on the Cyberspace and nosotros hope you have as much fun reading through the data as we did in putting it all together.

1. How much above-ground gold (gold that has been mined) is in that location in all the earth?

The best estimate at the end of 2011 is that around 165,000 metric tons (or tonnes) have been mined in all of man history. That’s almost 181,881 ordinary tons or 363,762,732 pounds, or five,820,203,717 ordinary ounces. Golden typically is measured in what are known equally troy ounces, which are a piddling bigger than ordinary ounces (a troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams whereas an ordinary ounce is 28.3495231 grams). There are 32.1507466 troy ounces in a kilogram or 32,150.7466 troy ounces in a metric ton.

“More than half of all humanity’s gold has been extracted in the past l years. At present the world’s richest deposits are fast existence depleted, and new discoveries are rare. Gone are the hundred-mile-long gilt reefs in South Africa or ruby-size nuggets in California. Virtually of the golden left to mine exists as traces buried in remote and fragile corners of the earth. It’s an invitation to devastation. But in that location is no shortage of miners, big and small, who are willing to accept.” [QUOTE SOURCE: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/01/aureate/larmer-text.]

SOURCES: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/impress/2009/01/gold/larmer-text, http://world wide web.gold.org/about_gold, and http://minerals.usgs.gov.

ii. How much gilt gets mined per year worldwide?

The table below shows earth gilded production from 1900 thru 2011. Production in 1900 was around 400 metric tons per twelvemonth and has consistently moved upwards over the years. Information technology is currently effectually 2,500 metric tons per twelvemonth. The all time high was reached in 2001, with ii,600 metric tons of gold product worldwide. The total gold mined from 1900 to the nowadays is just nether 141,000 metric tons. Given that humans accept mined a total of 165,000 metric tons over the course of history, that leaves just 24,000 metric tons mined before the 20thcentury.

SOURCE: http://goldratefortoday.org/world-gold-production-1900-2010.

*Estimated value for 2011.

**Cumulative boilerplate thru November 22, 2011, http://www.kitco.com/scripts/hist_charts/yearly_graphs.plx.

SOURCE: This tabular array thru 2009 appears here: http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/gold.pdf.

3. Merely didn’t the Spanish become lots and lots of gilded from the New World, especially from the Aztecs and Incas?

In fact, the Castilian got much more silver than gold from the New World. In the 16th century, when product was in total swing, the Spanish only got 154 metric tons of gilt, whereas they got 7440 metric tons of silver. Gilded production in the new world for the entire the 16thcentury was thus less than half of what it was worldwide in 1900. Here is a comparison, decade past decade, of Spanish aureate and silverish production in the New Globe in the 16th century:

SOURCE: http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115ch8.html

4. How much gold, really, is 165,000 metric tons (the total mined throughout homo history) and 2,500 metric tons (the total that’south currently mined annually)?

An Olympic swimming puddle is 50 by 25 by ii meters. Information technology therefore contains 2,500 cubic meters of h2o. Each cubic meter of water is one metric ton. Gold is nineteen.3 times equally dense equally h2o. Therefore an Olympic swimming pool would contain 48,250 metric tons of gold. It follows that three.42 Olympic-sized swimming pools could contain all the golden that’due south ever been mined. Another fashion to imagine this is to call up of all the gilded in the world e’er mined as a single cube. That would be a cube with each side but over 20 meters, or 67 feet, in length. Given that about 2,500 metric tons of gilt is mined each year, this almanac product of gilt would fit in a cube whose sides were 5 meters, or sixteen.six feet, in length. All the production of gold in the earth for a given yr would thus fit in a xx past 30 foot room with an 8 human foot ceiling.

5. Given 165,000 metric tons every bit an upper bound on bachelor gold, how much does that leave to each human on the planet?

Humanity has just hit the 7 billion mark. That leaves just nether 24 grams of gold to each person on planet earth, or .76 troy ounces or .83 ordinary ounces per person. In an ordinary male gold wedding ceremony band at 18-karat purity, there are about 5 grams of pure gold. That ways every person on planet earth could own almost five gilded rings. At the current price of $one,750.00 per troy ounce of golden, that leaves $1,326.00 in gold for each person on planet globe. “Gold production has increased by a factor of two.1 from 1959 to 2010. At the same fourth dimension, the world population has been multiplied by a factor 2.2. Thus we produced more than or less the same amount of gold per inhabitant as in 1959.” [QUOTE SOURCE: http://news.goldseek.com/Dani/1309290922.php)

6. How does the gilded that’s mined get used?

52 percentage gets used for jewelry, 18 percent constitute official holdings (as in central banks of nations), 16 pct take the form of investments, 12 pct find industrial uses, leaving 2 percent unaccounted for.

SOURCE: http://dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00479&cat_id=twenty

seven. Which nations consume the about gold?

Since jewelry is the most common use of gold, gilt consumption worldwide is most hands gauged by gold jewelry consumption. India is in this respect far and away the biggest consumer of gold. Here are the information for 2009 and 2010 of golden jewelry consumption by state in metric tons:

SOURCE: Come across “Total Twelvemonth 2010 Gilt Demand Trends Study” available at http://www.gilded.org/media/press_releases/annal/2011/02/global_gold_demand_in_2010_reached_a_10_year_high_in_tonnage_and_all_time_high_in_value/ likewise every bit http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/Gilded-jewellery-consumption-by-state-2011-02-28T130619Z-FACTBOX.

eight. Where does the world’s gilded go produced?

Here is the breakdown of 100 top gold-producing nations in the world for 2009. China sits at the top, with the United States the runner up:

SOURCES: http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?product=golden&graph=product and http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/gold/gold_t8.html. See besides http://www.dani2989.com/gold/goldproduction2011gb.html.

9. What’s happening with gold prices?

The trend since 1900 has been rising gold prices with occasional abrupt volatility. See the table in question 2 for the history of golden prices from 1900 to the present. Hither is a graph of gold prices over the last l years, which includes also gilded prices adjusted for aggrandizement:

SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_price_in_USD.png and http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/gold.pdf.

Here’s what’s happened with gold prices in the last decade:

SOURCE: http://world wide web.kitco.com.

Here’southward what’s happened with gold in the last yr (2011):

SOURCE: http://www.kitco.com.

10. Who’south got the gold that’south used for monetary and investment purposes and how much of this type of golden is out there?

In 2011, about two,100 metric tons of gold appeared in what are known as substitution-traded funds (ETFs). The lion’southward share was in 1 fund: 1,240 metric tons in SPDR Golden Shares (http://www.spdrgoldshares.com). As of 2009, the International monetary fund (IMF) held iii,217 metric tons of golden. In 2010, the key banks of nations held a total of 28,398 metric tons of golden. Here is the breakup:

SOURCES:

http://www.gold.org/investment/statistics/reserve_asset_statistics and http://af.reuters.com/article/southAfricaNews/idAFLDE7551YW20110606.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm [bang-up article on the world’south gold, titled “All the Gold in the World,” provides some background for this infographic]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2010/11/19/how-many-olympic-sized-swimming-pools-tin-we-fill-with-billionaire-gilded [describes how world’s aureate fills 3.27 Olympic-sized swimming pools with gilded, at 157,000 metric tons of above-ground gold in 2007 – these numbers have since increased, as reflected in a higher place]

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