Hacker News Reader

Well, technically you can. You can "print" gold by using other elements with simply changing number of protons to match 79. I believe this has been done already, if my memory serves me right reading some article years ago. Its just that the cost of doing so even on small scale overweight the cost of the resulting gold, even if the price would be of a 10-fold what it is today.

tldr: its possible, just not worth it.

View on HN

But it's interesting, because it sets an upper limit for the gold price.

Yes very interesting. Gold was originally formed within supernovae, which is a sure sign that our planet is formed from molecules that have been through at least one or two supernovae already. Another fund gold fact, the reason gold appears in "veins" is that it's actually big blobs, but over time water runs through the blob, dragging along little bits of dust with it down the same channel. Those little bits of dust build up and become veins of gold.

Ha, yeah technically you can grind the chain too, but it requires unreasonable amounts of resources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com