But most alchemists are liars. They put some mineral pigments and stones together. When they are melted in a high-temperature furnace, the pigments will turn golden, and then they will stick to stones and look like gold.
Although alchemy fooled the ancient people, it must be said that they did find the right direction. Theoretically, the elements such as silicon, carbon and iron contained in the stone will be converted into gold if conditions permit. Unfortunately, the reaction conditions of gold are very harsh, and only the universe can do it. At present, what humans can master is to convert lead into gold.
Gold used to be the big brother in the jewelry industry, and it was not replaced until the birth of diamonds. However, diamonds, no matter how powerful, are just a commodity. Gold can affect the existence of financial markets. To some extent, it is a "currency".
Gold is very stable in chemical properties and can resist corrosion and radiation, so it plays an important role in the aerospace field. The famous "Voyager 1" probe carried a gold plate with a human portrait on it. "Voyager 1" was launched to convey the information of the earth and human beings to the universe. In this project, gold is not only a disseminator, but also a protector. Part of the working area of Voyager 1 is wrapped in gold foil, which is an important equipment to prevent cosmic radiation damage.
In medicine, gold has experienced twists and turns. At first, people thought it could cure all diseases because it was precious, but it was found to be toxic after use. In fact, it is not gold that is poisonous, but other heavy metals in gold. The chemical properties of gold are very stable. Gold in nature is basically a simple substance. Even if it enters the human body, it will not be corroded by gastric acid. Gold is not toxic.
However, the ancient alchemy technology was not good, and there were many heavy metal impurities in it, such as mercury, which would cause protein degeneration of cells and lead to death.
As a metal, gold naturally has all the excellent characteristics of metal, such as good ductility and electrical conductivity. Therefore, some wires of some important electronic equipment often have corroded and worn parts, and all of them are attended by gold. Such as computers, jet engines and so on. Other metals can't take its place.
However, as a resource, gold is non-renewable, but fortunately, unlike fuel, gold will turn into gas. It has been circulating as a currency for thousands of years and is conservative in nature. However, due to various reasons, human beings still "lost" tens of thousands of tons of gold, which became particles mixed in land rocks and it was very difficult to extract.
Therefore, people's demand for gold has been very strong, and it is no wonder that an alchemist was born. Compared with the alchemist's lip service, the gold digger really works hard. Here, people look for gold on land, and in the ocean, people also look for gold crazily. After World War I, Germany paid sky-high compensation and even tried to extract gold from seawater, which ended in failure.
Just as mankind was frantically searching for gold on the earth, in March 1852 and March 17, Italian astronomer Gasparis discovered a strange asteroid, which is a planet full of golden soul stars.
If its gold can be transported to the earth, then human beings will no longer have to worry about the scarcity of gold. Unfortunately, Gasparis' discovery did not cause a sensation at that time. Until the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union launched StarCraft, all of which took a fancy to the "full ball of golden armor" spirit star.
Spirit is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and its mass is only one twentieth of that of the Earth. Unlike other asteroids, it is an almost pure metal star and is rare in the asteroid belt. What's more, these metals are particularly valuable. In addition to people's favorite gold, there are elements such as platinum, nickel and copper on it. The price of the whole earth is 10 trillion US dollars, which is 70,000 times of the world's gross national product. On 20 17, the United States officially announced that it would launch a probe to the "home planet" spirit star in 2022.
However, the United States claims that the purpose of launching the detector is not to extract the gold on it, but to confirm the true content of gold. As early as before, astronomers analyzed it with space spectrometer, and concluded that 95% spirits are precious metals. However, in later studies, astronomers thought this data was wrong. After the modification, the gold density of Lingxing should only account for about 82%.
Gold is so expensive because it is scarce. Why is it scarce? This is because the gold on our earth is not produced by the earth itself, but comes from supernovae and neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago.
In the periodic table of chemical elements, the later the element content, the smaller the relative atomic mass. This law applies not only to the earth, but also to the universe. The most abundant element in the universe is hydrogen, which is also the "ancestor" of all elements. For example, a hydrogen atom has a nucleus and an electron, and then two hydrogen atoms collide and fuse to form a new atom. The mass of a nucleus is the sum of two hydrogen atoms, and there are also two peripheral electrons. This new atom is a helium atom. By analogy, theoretically all atoms come from hydrogen. However, the later the periodic table is, the harsher the formation conditions are and the more difficult the process is.
Stars such as the sun contain the most hydrogen, and their radiant energy also comes from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. But the life of a star is limited, and the time limit is that the hydrogen on it is used up.
When a star runs out of hydrogen, it will start to consume helium. In this process, carbon, silicon, oxygen, sulfur and other elements will be born, and there will be a small amount of iron in metal elements. There is still no gold at this time. When helium is exhausted, the star will collapse due to the mass of the inner core and a supernova explosion will occur. Only in the explosion environment can heavy metal elements be formed, some of which are washed out by the explosion and scattered to other planets, and the other part is "concentrated" into neutron stars.
Neutron stars are between white dwarfs and black holes and have the heaviest mass in the universe. Astronomers believe that neutron stars will be the home of some stars. The density of neutron stars is too high, exceeding 65438+ billion tons per cubic centimeter, which leads to its huge gravity, and even the light will escape parabolically when it gets there, not to mention the gravity between them.
In the universe, there will be a binary system formed by two neutron stars, which will keep approaching and eventually collide, and the heavy metal elements inside will be thrown out again and sent to the universe.
In the early days of the earth's formation, there was a supernova explosion or neutron star collision in the universe. The gold element on the other side was thrown to the earth, entered the core during its formation, and was sent to the crust by volcanic eruption.
Since the gold on the earth comes from supernovae and neutron stars, is this how the gold of soul stars comes from? It is certain that its gold came from this way, but it is different from the earth itself and belongs to the M-type asteroid in the asteroid belt.
The so-called asteroid belt is actually a preparatory nebula that became a planet in the early days of the formation of the solar system nebula, but because Jupiter's gravity is too great, they can't gather together and eventually become a debris belt. The composition of the spirit star, especially the core of the planet such as the earth, makes astronomers guess that the spirit star is the core of the unformed planet.
The core contains many metal elements such as iron and nickel, as well as foreign heavy metals such as gold. The element content of the soul star is similar to that of the earth, but a little more gold, which shows that the planets in the whole solar system encountered supernova and neutron star activities in the early stage of formation and were "endowed" with gold. It's just that other planets hide it in the core and occasionally enter the crust through volcanoes.
In the eyes of astronomers, the value of nereus lies not in gold, but in its great reference significance for the early formation of the earth and even the formation of the solar system. From this, we can see what the immature core was like more than 4 billion years ago, why the solar system formed eight planets, how big Jupiter's gravity is, and what help it has for later spacecraft. That's why they want to send a probe to Spirit Star.
Gold is a gift from the universe. This is not the first time, nor the last time. The age of the universe is about1400 million years, because the expansion diameter of the universe has reached 96 billion light years, which contains a lot of resources. Take our solar system as an example. Uranus has a lot of methane in its atmosphere, even in its mantle. Methane is the limited natural gas on the earth, which was formed by the earth itself through hundreds of millions of years. If one day humans run out of methane on the earth, can they go to Uranus to get it?
Enlarging the solar system, the richness of resources is beyond our imagination. In recent years, mankind has suffered from the energy and environment of the earth. If space resources can be introduced, we can not only get rid of the bondage of energy, but also develop new uses. Of course, these are all imaginations at present.
If the American probe is successfully launched, it will bring back not only gold, but also human exploration and progress, which will provide reference for obtaining resources from other planets in the future.
Gold is extremely important to human economy, culture and science and technology. If we can get gold from the spirit star, maybe mankind will make great progress. However, astronomers are constantly taking preventive measures. At present, our understanding of nereus is limited to observation, and whether its true composition is gold remains to be revealed by the detector.
This exploration may be a prelude, that is, the battle for human resources in the universe has finally turned from the initial assumption into reality.