
Mass of the oceans - 1.4x10^21 kg
Mass of Au in the sun - 10^20 kg
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good comic, I say

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A few others have already derived much higher quantities than that. Where are you getting your information?Mfraser wrote:↶
New member, didn’tsee this comment, but -
Mass of the oceans - 1.4x10^21 kg
Mass of Au in the sun - 10^20 kg
To be fair, the amount of gold in Earth's own core would do that job fairly well, too. (It wouldn't crush *everything* because it'd only be 4 meters or so, but it'd kill anyone out in the open and crush most buildings, for sure.)paha arkkitehti wrote:↶niky wrote:A sextillion tons of gold.
You could bankrupt every country on Earth a million times over by dumping that amount into the economy.
Only because the physical weight of all that gold is enough to _crush_ the economy. And everything else on Earth.
gmalivuk wrote:To be fair, the amount of gold in Earth's own core would do that job fairly well, too. (It wouldn't crush *everything* because it'd only be 4 meters or so, but it'd kill anyone out in the open and crush most buildings, for sure.)
GlassHouses wrote:paha arkkitehti wrote:niky wrote:A sextillion tons of gold.
You could bankrupt every country on Earth a million times over by dumping that amount into the economy.
Only because the physical weight of all that gold is enough to _crush_ the economy. And everything else on Earth.
And even if one were to deliver a fraction of the gold from the sun to Earth, small enough that it didn't crush everything but large enough to dwarf the gold reserves we already have, what would the economic impact be?
The price of gold would tank, obviously, and that would cause hard times for people in the gold production business, but since the value of money has nothing to do with the price of gold, everything else would keep humming along just as before. And we could congratulate ourselves on the wisdom of those who came before us and decided to end the "gold standard."
hamjudo wrote:gmalivuk wrote:To be fair, the amount of gold in Earth's own core would do that job fairly well, too. (It wouldn't crush *everything* because it'd only be 4 meters or so, but it'd kill anyone out in the open and crush most buildings, for sure.)
Before we can calculate the size of the whole[sic] we need, there are a few assumptions that need to be made:
Is diamond the best material for the casing?
Mikeski wrote:hamjudo wrote:gmalivuk wrote:To be fair, the amount of gold in Earth's own core would do that job fairly well, too. (It wouldn't crush *everything* because it'd only be 4 meters or so, but it'd kill anyone out in the open and crush most buildings, for sure.)
Before we can calculate the size of the whole[sic] we need, there are a few assumptions that need to be made:
Is diamond the best material for the casing?
Don't bother with questions past this one; you'll need some sort of magical unobtainium to hold a hole to the core open against earth's own gravity, never mind the heat.
hamjudo wrote:gmalivuk wrote:Long before the gold layer is a millimeter thick, the waste heat from the mining system will boil away the oceans, unless the mining process is slow enough to get the heat off planet without killing us. Even a micron per year would probably be deadly.
Wee Red Bird wrote:hamjudo wrote:Long before the gold layer is a millimeter thick, the waste heat from the mining system will boil away the oceans, unless the mining process is slow enough to get the heat off planet without killing us. Even a micron per year would probably be deadly.
Do you really want to vent the heat off from the Earth's core? It would probably be best to try and keep it down there rather than risk the core cooling down.
Instead of venting while trying to cool down equipment, perhaps preventing it heating up would be better. Find some way to repel the heat. Probably something akin to a shield from Star Trek to deflect heat away and not something we have on hand at the moment.
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