What is gold? Gold is a symbol of wealth, fine jewelry and crafts, and a special currency that can be used for reserves and investments, but in the end, gold is nothing more than a metal.
Since gold is only a kind of metal, it cannot be eaten and worn, why is it so valuable? One of the main reasons for the value of gold is that "things are rare and expensive", "rare" is rare, and for rarity, many people may have a misunderstanding, the so-called rarity, can be divided into true rarity and false rarity, only real rare items can be "rare" and expensive. I once saw a news that a child secretly took his parents' money and spent tens to hundreds of yuan a piece to buy some exquisite cards. Obviously, this far exceeds the value of the card, but when the child's parents find the merchant, the merchant refuses to return it on the grounds of "collectible value". This is a classic case of "fake rarity".
Cards have collectible value, it is impossible, only "real rare" items have collectible value, and cards are not. What is true rarity? It is a rare item that is not reproducible.
The card does not apply any high-tech anti-counterfeiting technology, even if there is only one in the world, it does not have collection value, only need to invest tens of thousands of pieces, you can print unlimited. In fact, valuable antiques are not really rare items, its non-reproducibility is temporary, so its rarity is also temporary, with the progress of science and technology, one day, we can perfectly copy items at the atomic level, the value of any antique is equivalent to the cost of copying this antique. But gold is different from all of them, gold is really rare.
The matter known today did not exist in the universe from the beginning, and at the beginning of the universe, only hydrogen and a small amount of helium were produced, because these two elements were the lightest and the simplest.
Later, the matter gradually converged under the mutual gravitational action to form a nebula, and the nebula material continued to condense to give birth to stars. The huge mass of the star makes the material squeeze toward the center, under great pressure, the hydrogen fusion is ignited, so the hydrogen element is generated by the fusion reaction to generate helium, when the hydrogen element on the star is exhausted, the outward radiation expansion pressure weakens, the pressure inside the star will be further strengthened under its own gravitational action, so before the hydrogen fusion is completely over, helium fusion ignites, just like this, the fusion continues to push towards heavier elements, and more and more species of matter are formed in this process.
However, the fusion reaction of the star can only produce elements below iron, because the fusion of the iron element no longer releases energy like the previous element fusion, but instead absorbs energy, so the outward radiation expansion pressure generated by fusion will completely disappear, and the entire star will quickly collapse to the center.
It can be seen that even powerful stars cannot produce gold, so where does gold come from? It comes from a supernova explosion. When the nuclear fusion of the star is carried out to the iron element, the entire star will collapse to the center, and the huge pressure will quickly hit the core of the star, which will trigger a strong rebound in an instant, so the huge energy is released, which is the supernova explosion, the energy released by the supernova explosion is too large and too strong, so that the celestial body within 50 light years will be affected.
In the instant of the supernova explosion, a large number of elements heavier than iron formed, and gold was among them.
Not all stars will have supernova explosions, only stars with a mass of more than 8 times the Sun will become a neutron star through supernova explosions, so the production of gold is very difficult. With the explosion of supernovae, gold and other materials will be thrown into the universe, only these materials will be condensed into new celestial bodies due to gravitational action, such as the Earth, and gold itself is a heavier element, so it will be deposited to the center of the planet, so 99% of the gold on Earth is in the core, which is the area we cannot touch, and the gold we can mine is less than 1% of the total gold on The Earth. Rarity is an important reason why gold is valuable, but it is not the only reason, gold can not be eaten or worn, but it is very useful.
You must have heard of the acquisition of scrap mobile phones and computers to refine gold, right? It's true.
Because gold has good ductility, both can be made into a very thin gold leaf, but also can be pulled into a very fine gold wire, and the chemical properties of gold are extremely stable, even if it is burned, it will still not be oxidized, that is to say, the chemical properties will not change in the slightest, so it is an indispensable connection material on the circuit board. However, refining gold from waste electronic products is a very professional thing, and it will be exposed to toxic chemical components, and ordinary people should not try it easily. Of course, the use of gold is not limited to mobile phones and computers, aircraft, satellites, aerospace electronic systems are indispensable, so gold is not only beautiful, but a very rare and useful metal.