Seems a pretty big assumption. We have an abundance of silicon, that hasn't sparked any sort of revolution around silicon.
Gold has some nice properties, but I don't think it is a wonder metal.
Gold has some nice properties, but I don't think it is a wonder metal.
...But it has? Think of all the things we make out of silicon and silicon compounds. Buildings, glass, countertops, tools, computers, etc...
If silicon were rarer we would surely not be making buildings and windows out of silicon compounds! Some of these do not have easy replacements. You can make buildings without silicon (many are made without) but without silicon we would have a hard time coming up with something like glass. Glass fueled a lot of our scientific revolutions, giving us glassware for chemistry, optics for microscopes and telescopes, etc.
Who can know how long it might have taken for us to discover the theory of gravity, cell theory, germ theory, or large chunks of chemistry without glass.
So we already have the precedent of a precious metal becoming an industrial one, although I don't mean to suggest gold alloys would be good for the same applications due to its density.
For example, Titanium is superior to aluminum in most weight/strength applications. If we could mass produce it, we'd not use aluminum anymore.
Carbon fiber is even better than Titanium. Again, if it were mass producible, we'd use it for everything.
I can point to materials that, if they were cheaper, we'd make everything out of them. That's because we've researched these materials and know that they have potential applications. Their availability hasn't been a factor in the research, not really.
Gold, AFAIK, doesn't have those same sorts of analogous usages. It doesn't have a "But if it were cheaper" sort of application. Maybe some electronics or nano-scale applications might benefit from it, but I wouldn't think it would be excluded from that research since you are talking about a tiny amount per component (after all, we still use gold to plate electronic leads today).
Abundance matters (iron, steel), ore processing (electricity and baauxite), but so too do material properties.
Worth noting that aluminium itself is abundant, it is the processing and refinment, before abundant supplies of electricity, which are difficult and proved limiting:
After all, we've used gold for tooth fillings in the past. That's a pretty high accessibility for everyone.
I could see the argument for materials (such as anti-matter) which are only synthesized in the lab. However, gold, while expensive, is also fairly common to researchers.
Take platinum as another counter point. Even though it is more expensive than gold, we still put it in catalytic converters for millions of cars.
Gold is researchable today. Maybe if it were more available we wouldn't exclude it from research due to cost. But that is a big maybe.
If silicon were as rare as gold, we'd still be able to say "Hey, this gets transparent when we heat it up" and "Hey, this doesn't really conduct electricity well". That is, we'd be able to see it and have the arguments of "if we just had a bunch more of this, we could make a lot of cool glass things". AFAIK, there isn't some application that exists like that with gold.
It is very malleable. It has a low melting point. It doesn't corrode. The best application I think we'd come up for it is something like using it for soldering like we use tin (it would probably do a better job there than tin does).
The whole article is written with the tone of someone who doesn't understand the concept of "unknown unknowns".
I really don't understand why you would believe this. There are countless things we can make out of widely available materials like stone, wood, glass, steel, etc., because we've spent an enormous amount of time learning how to work with these materials. Researchers have budgets that they have to work with, so they don't use much gold, just enough to plate something that needs to be corrosion resistant or another similar use. Some researchers have large budgets, but who would research the application of gold to everyday purposes if you know that it wouldn't be financially viable?
> Take platinum as another counter point. Even though it is more expensive than gold, we still put it in catalytic converters for millions of cars.
Platinum has been variously more and less expensive than gold over the course of history. At this particular moment it is less expensive, ten years ago it was more.
> If silicon were as rare as gold, we'd still be able to say "Hey, this gets transparent when we heat it up" and "Hey, this doesn't really conduct electricity well".
If silicon were as rare as gold, we would not have:
- Windows
- Eyeglasses
- Microscopes
- Telescopes
- Cameras
Except for use by the extremely wealthy and well-funded, or perhaps in extremely inferior versions. There are some better substitutes we could make in the latter half of the 20th century out of plastics.
> It is very malleable. It has a low melting point. It doesn't corrode. The best application I think we'd come up for it is something like using it for soldering like we use tin (it would probably do a better job there than tin does).
You wouldn't stop using tin just because you started using gold :-) You would use something like 80Au20Sn.
But I think that just because you can't imagine a use for it, doesn't mean that someone else hasn't.
Because, for general manufacturing, gold is sort of garbage. It looks nice and doesn't corrode. So that's cool. But it is extremely malleable (bad) and has a relatively low melting point (also bad).
So, what would you do with a gold thing that scratches when you look at it and melts at a slightly higher temperature than lead?
What daily application would you use it for? Wiring? Aluminum and copper are better. A Mylar type blanket? Maybe, IDK. Door handles? Possibly.
But I fail to see where else we might use it. You wouldn't use it for any sort of structural application. You MIGHT use it to plate the likes of steal beams/cables to keep them from corroding.
You want your coating to be electrochemically weaker than the material you are trying to protect so it dissolves instead of the material.
Pure gold is crap but cheap gold means cheap gold alloys and they are way better.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2016-07-lab-titan...
That revolution occurred 2000 years ago and then again about 500 years ago.
The ability to work with "glass" was a HUGE deal and actually remarkably difficult--it's one of the major technical advances of the Romans.
And then the application of glass to optics was another big technical jump--eyeglasses and magnifiers are a huge deal (starting around 1500 or so).
Magnified optics, of course, is the gateway to a lot of other scientific advances. Including, of course, photolithography--which enables the manufacture of the computer chip.
Working with silicon is probably second only to working with iron in terms of technical importance to society.
Care to guess how soon we could discover that it's neat material for CPUs if it costed 40k$ per gram?
I recently read article about titanium-gold alloy having some neat properties.
> Gold has some nice properties, but I don't think it is a wonder metal.
I pray to the olfd gods and the new that this comment is in jest, but just in case... the silicon (integrated circuit) chip.