Far deeper than any gold mine man has ever excavated lies the world’s greatest collection of gold—in the earth’s core. In fact, there is so much gold contained in the core that it could coat the Earth’s surface 1.5 feet thick, placing everyone knee-deep in the precious metal, according to research conducted at Australia’s Macquarie University.
Scientists are confident this is true because of their theory of how the Earth was formed billions of years ago. They believe Earth resulted from a series of smaller celestial bodies—called planetesimals—crashing over the course of millions of years. At that point, Earth was an ocean of molten magma. Iron sank towards the core, as did other heavy elements, including gold and platinum. By analyzing the composition of meteorites similar to the planetesimals, Geologist Bernard Wood of Macquarie University calculated that 1.6 quadrillion tons of gold lies in the Earth’s core.
So, how is it that we have gold in the Earth’s crust? It’s thanks to meteorites that crashed into the Earth during a cataclysmic era 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. By analyzing isotopic information from 3.8 billion-year-old rocks extracted from Greenland, scientists from the University of Bristol determined that gold, tungsten, and other precious metals were seeded into the crust by meteorites.
“Our work shows that most of the precious metals on which our economies and many key industrial processes are based have been added to our planet by lucky coincidence when the Earth was hit by about 20 billion tonnes of asteroidal material,” said geologist Matthias Willbold in announcing his findings.
