Original subtitles

Men have killed for it.

Entire cities were built of it.

And armies were formed

to find it.

What is it about the glittering substance known as gold

that has made it the most coveted of all metals?

In ancient times, it was considered so precious,

it was called, "the flesh of the gods."

today, we use gold for everything

from currency to space travel to electronics.

But beyond its mere commercial value,

could gold have a special power?

Something that draws us to it and compels us

to hold it, own it,

even wear it on our bodies?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

While digging an ordinary utility ditch

just off the coast of the black sea,

a worker unearths a number of

unusual metallic objects from the ground.

When archaeologists later excavate the site,

they discover a vast necropolis

containing the oldest gold artifacts ever found...

Dating back to 4600 bc.

Analysis of the elaborate burial ground indicates

that the ancient culture,

known as the chalcolithic varna people,

had a fascination with gold.

Members of the elite were buried

with gold ornaments sewn into shrouds,

and their bodies were placed in graves

laden with exquisite golden artifacts.

6,000 years ago,

neolithic people were fashioning jewelry out of gold.

Now, we can speculate about what attracted them.

It was bright, in probably a very dull world,

and it never corroded.

So it was, in a world in which mortality was ever present...

Sickness and want and starvation...

Here was something eternal,

never lost its luster,

beautiful, shiny, ageless.

While the relics found at varna

are the oldest processed gold objects ever found,

they are certainly not unique.

Throughout virtually all of recorded history,

gold was used in everything from ornamentation

to the creation of sacred objects.

It was cherished above all metals,

especially because of its warm, golden color,

which would, when polished, glow like the sun.

The egyptians took the view that gold was the flesh of the gods,

so therefore, a... Very much a divine material.

It was a very appropriate material

to use in funerary contexts, because

ultimately people... by being reborn in the next world...

Had become gods, to a greater or lesser degree.

And the kings, in particular.

The ancient incas also linked gold to the heavens.

They believed it was made from the actual sweat

of their sun god, inti.

Gold was the most precious metal

of the incas, not because it had any kind of value,

like money, but because it was the sweat of the sun.

The sun was the highest deity of the inca, and therefore,

the sweat of the sun represented

the most sacred possession imaginable.

According to stories contained in the hebrew bible,

gold objects were used

not merely to show a symbolic connection to the divine,

but to actually embody the power of god himself.

And to this end, one golden object in particular

became infamous as the most sacred

and most powerful and mysterious of all:

The ark of the covenant.

The ark of the covenant is the central shrine

to ancient israel.

According to the bible, it's a wooden box

made of acacia wood that is overlaid in gold.

Inside of the ark of the covenant

are said to be a couple of things...

The pieces of the ten commandments

that were smashed by moses,

a jar of the manna,

and aaron's rod was also kept in the ark of the covenant.

The idea was that wherever the ark of the covenant went,

that's where the power of god would be.

Is it possible

that objects made of gold actually have some sort

of cosmic significance,

a power that literally connected ancient people to something

or someone beyond this world?

But if so, how?

Perhaps the answers can be found by examining

the ancient writings of the first known human civilization:

The ancient sumerians.

The sumerians had a very intricate writing system

called "cuneiform" script.

One of the interesting points about the sumerian culture is

the thousands of tablets and pictograms

they've left us describing their daily lives.

For decades,

historians and archaeologists remained frustrated

in their efforts to translate the sumerian cuneiform texts.

But one man believed he had, at last, cracked the code.

After years of exhaustive research

and countless hours spent translating hundreds

of cuneiform tablets,

in 1976, author and researcher zecharia sitchin

published a book entitled, the 12th planet.

In it, he claimed that

contained within the sumerian ancient writings was

a profoundly unique account

of mankind's origins on planet earth.

According to sitchin, the so-called sumerian gods were,

in fact, visitors from the planet nibiru,

who landed on earth in mesopotamia

more than 450,000 years ago.

The anunnaki are among the most mysterious

and powerful beings of myth and sacred tradition.

We're told that the anunnaki had

these enormous life spans of thousands of years.

They came to earth on a special mission

to bring wisdom and also to mine certain materials

from the earth plane itself.

Now one of the interesting proponents

of the story of zecharia sitchin's research

isn't just the anunnaki,

but where the anunnaki actually come from.

The sumerians were very clear

in diagramming all the known outer planets

in our solar system accurately.

However, they included an additional planet

which they called "nibiru."

the anunnaki had damaged their atmosphere.

And by using gold,

they found that they could patch these atmospheric holes...

Hence becomes the story of our humanity.

The anunnaki literally came to earth to mine the gold.

And when realizing it was such a toil to do so,

created us as a worker race to do that for them.

Zecharia sitchin's hypothesis...

That the anunnaki came to earth to mine gold

and then created humans to perform the task for them...

Was both bold and controversial.

If true, it would mean

that mankind's near-obsession

with everything gold had an historical foundation.

But this incredible notion...

That humans were formed to retrieve gold

and present it to the gods...

Was not merely a theory created by sitchin.

Believe it or not,

there is archaeological evidence

to suggest that ancient people did exactly that.

Believed to be the site of an ancient meteor crater,

this circular-shaped mountain lake was once the site

of remarkable ancient rituals involving gold, centuries ago.

Lake guatavita was within the territory of the muisca

or the chibcha people, which was a chiefdom,

not quite as high a civilization as the incas

or as the aztecs, but a chiefdom

with civilization itself that had a lot of gold.

The ruler in the southern half

of the muisca territory was known as the zipa,

who was responsible

for performing the muisca's most sacred ritual.

According to legend, the zipa would float out

on a royal barge in the middle of lake guatavita

to make offerings of gold

to a god believed to live at the bottom of the lake.

It was said that the chief, adorned with resin,

and then adorned with gold dust, would then

jump into the water in order to wash the gold dust off.

And that this gold would accumulate in that lake,

and that golden objects, as sacrifices,

would be thrown into that particular lake.

In 1911,

an excavation of lake guatavita was led

by british engineer hartley knowles.

Knowles reported that he had recovered some $20,000 worth

of treasure from the bottom of the lake,

including golden artifacts.

Could this remarkable find have offered tangible proof

that ancient peoples mined gold for the purpose

of offering it to their gods, just as sitchin's translations

of the ancient sumerian tablets had indicated?

Perhaps.

But there is another theory...

One that suggests mankind's obsession with gold

is not due to some mere historical connection

that stretches back to our ancient past,

but due to the genuine power that gold possesses...

A power that, if unleashed,

could unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Is there any gold in fort knox?

Like its color, its shine, its conductivity,

there is one factor that makes it among the most prized

and valuable of all precious metals.

It is genuinely very, very scarce.

Now, how much mined gold actually is there in the world?

Considering that we've been mining it

for 6,000 years,

not all that much.

In fact, if you...

Took all the gold ever mined in all of history,

melted it down into a single block,

it would probably cover a tennis court

to a depth of about 30 feet.

That's it. That's the whole total.

The reason why gold is so hard to come by

is that every ounce of gold

that has ever been found on earth

did not actually originate on our planet.

There is gold in space.

There's no question about it.

In fact, all of the elements that we know of

have been created at the cores of stars.

The more heavy elements are created

in the explosion of a star

when it goes supernova.

All the elements that we know of,

including gold, are made in this fashion.

During the so-called late heavy bombardment period,

some 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago,

billions of tons of heavy metals

and these rare elements rained to earth through meteorites

and asteroids impacting the planet.

These meteorites are what brought gold, tungsten

and other precious elements to our planet.

But while gold is a genuinely rare commodity

on our planet, it is by no means the rarest.

Platinum has great conductive abilities.

It's rather rare.

It's actually one of the rarest elements we have,

and it's a very useful metal in a lot of what we do.

Platinum is considered

to be 30 times more rare than gold,

and yet, it is not unusual for the price of gold

to be higher than that of platinum,

particularly in times of economic uncertainty.

But why?

The origins of this primitive desire

to love and value and treasure gold,

that you can scratch your head over forever.

All we know is that our distant preliterate ancestors

were attracted to it,

and somehow that's come down to us.

Perhaps a clue as to why we are so passionately...

And almost illogically... drawn to gold above all other metals

can be found in our collective tendency

to adorn our bodies with it,

as if it had some kind of magical properties.

The museum of pre-history and early history acquires

a glittering artifact

from an anonymous swiss collector...

A tall, cone-shaped hat,

crafted from a thin sheet of gold

and embellished with dozens of sun and moon symbols.

It is one of four that have been unearthed

at various sites throughout europe,

and is believed by historians to date back

as far as 1000 bc.

What is so important about them is that they indicate

that there was a common culture.

The images on them represent astronomy,

the study of the stars.

They also have complicated mathematical implications,

suggesting a level of philosophical development

that's very advanced for what we thought

was available at that time.

German researchers carefully studied the symbols

on the golden hat and concluded they represent

a complex mathematical table,

one that can accurately calculate the long-term cycles

of the sun and the moon.

But how could ancient people

have been able to make such advanced

and highly sophisticated astronomical predictions?

And why was it so important

that they construct this incredible hat out of gold?

The suggestion is that they belonged

to what might be referred to as oracles...

People that could fall into an altered state

and prophesize... Could come up with statements

relating to the future or otherworldly situations.

There's also this idea that certain metals

resonate or vibrate at certain resonant frequencies.

So if you wear a lot of gold, it gets you connected

to the broader energy fields that we all live in

and move through on a regular basis.

So the golden hats are kind of interesting,

because if gold is something

that actually enhances your connection with energies,

then the wearing of a golden hat,

especially in a conical shape, would tend to amplify

the signal that you were getting from on high.

Ancient oracles using golden hats

to receive esoteric knowledge about the universe?

While this may seem like a farfetched notion,

it is just one of many instances

in which ancient cultures believed that gold adornments

held a special power within them

and could bestow that power upon those who possessed

these gold ornaments.

Throughout history,

people have adorned themselves with gold,

because it symbolizes power, wealth, beauty.

But ultimately, gold is considered

a very good conductor of electricity.

Gold is one of the best conductors there is.

The other thing that's very important about it is that gold

is an inert material... It doesn't react with anything.

And since there's no corrosion,

electrical contacts can remain clean and good.

When you really want the best electrical connectivity,

we always buy our gold-coated connectors.

It's incredibly easy to work with,

you can make it very thin... Gold leafing is something

we're very familiar with...

And you don't need a lot of gold

to get good conductive properties.

So it's possible that when you're wearing gold,

that you are able to better conduct electricity,

and might possess amazing powers.

If you think that the belief in gold objects

having some sort of intrinsic power

is the quaint notion of a bygone era,

well, you'd be wrong.

After all, we still reward

our nation's highest athletic achievements

with gold medals.

Gold jewelry is still more desirable than that of silver

or platinum.

And monarchs still wear gold crowns on their heads.

These are very ancient symbols of power,

and this set off the great scramble for gold,

the great search, the lust,

the desire to have gold.

That's what installed gold

as something that was central to our whole culture

and way of life.

Truth is, gold objects have tremendous power

in our world,

perhaps even a more profound power than we've realized.

And there are those who believe that this extraordinary power

can be best appreciated while examining

a bizarre behavioral phenomenon known as...

"gold fever."

Carpenter james marshall

is building a water-powered sawmill

on the banks of the american river

when he makes an unexpected

and understandably thrilling discovery.

Flakes of gold are floating in the water.

When news gets out, people from all over the world

head for california...

More than 300,000 in just six years.

It is the start of the california gold rush,

a frenzied hunt for an estimated $2 billion

in buried treasure.

In ten years,

they mined 850 tons of gold.

Now, when we think of a gold rush,

we generally think of what they call in the business

an "area play."

gold is discovered in one place...

People rush to that place to see if they, too, can discover gold.

That's how the california gold rush worked.

The california gold rush

is perhaps the most famous example

of what is known as "gold fever,"

a phenomenon which has compelled people and even entire countries

to embark on a quest for gold,

often with only the slightest chance of success,

and sometimes even less than that.

Gold's a very big metal in the human imagination.

They call it the "emotive metal"

in the bullion business,

because it tends to follow emotions.

There is this possibility of winning the lottery,

of getting some extraordinary fortune that was just found.

Symbolically, it may mean even more.

Maybe psychologically, within ourselves,

a sense of self-esteem, or the value of life.

You have people willing to go

to every extreme known to man

in order to acquire gold.

You have the roman legion

that traveled throughout the known world

to try and get gold.

You have the crusaders who went

into the near east and the far east,

searching for gold.

You had cortez enslave indian peoples

of latin america in order to mine it,

extract it and send it back to europe.

And, of course, in the 20th century,

you have explorers diving under the sea

in order to get gold that was lost in storms

400 years before.

If you look at what people have done to get gold,

it's everything that you can imagine,

and then some things that you probably can't.

It is perhaps safe to say

that throughout history,

there is no limit to the lengths that humans will go

to possess gold.

And if they couldn't acquire it by traditional methods,

there were some who thought that it was possible

to make it artificially,

by means of a strange, mysterious process

known as alchemy.

The alchemists, their main goal

was to turn lead into gold.

Lead was viewed as kind of a boring, dull,

not important metal, and gold, of course,

was very valuable and precious.

So you try and get various chemical reactions to occur

and turn the lead into gold.

For thousands of years,

kings sought out a magical substance

that could transform common, ordinary metals into gold.

Scientists and alchemists spent centuries trying to invent one.

Over time, this mythical object became referred to

as the philosopher's stone.

The philosopher's stone was an idea that you could have

a magic kind of material do the alchemy.

And the thought that one could do that

is attractive in and of itself.

And if somebody tells you that something exists

and you're smart, like isaac newton,

you might think, "well, I'm smart enough

to figure it out for myself, so I should go looking for it."

and I think that motivated a lot of the early scientists

to get distracted by this idea.

We have a kind of guidance coming from beyond

our ordinary knowing,

a whole series of sacred mysteries involved

in this rather simple form.

The philosopher's stone was this simple material, a stone,

out of which something very powerful can emerge.

It has rich psychological symbolism.

A simple stone that can turn anything into gold?

It sounds outlandish.

So outlandish, you might think the philosopher's stone

is a symbol of how the pursuit of gold can cause people

to lose their grip on reality.

But believe it or not,

this is one fantasy that has actually come true.

In an early experiment with nuclear energy,

professor hantaro nagaoka

directs 150,000 volts of electricity

at a mercury isotope isolated in the laboratory.

His goal, to remove a proton from the nucleus of the mercury

Gold.

Incredibly, the experiment is a success.

In prior times,

the idea of turning a base metal like lead into gold

was extremely attractive

because one could make a lot of money by doing that.

The problem was that, at that time,

people didn't even know atoms existed,

or that the number of protons in the nucleus determined

the element and that one would have to change those,

somehow, to do the alchemy.

On the periodic table of elements,

gold is element number 79, and mercury is number 80,

which is why removing a single proton from mercury

can actually transform it into gold.

But doing so requires a staggering amount

of both electrical energy and money.

You have to get a nuclear reactor

or a particle accelerator or something like that,

and it takes a long time running the reactor

to make even a tiny amount of gold.

If you irradiate for about a day in our reactor,

you make three-tenths of a cent worth of gold.

Since we charge $200 an hour to operate the reactor,

you're pretty far in the hole.

Whether it's panning a river

or harnessing the power of a nuclear reactor,

humans are always searching for new sources of gold.

But since creating gold in a laboratory

is not yet economically feasible,

maybe it's time we ask ourselves

how much gold has already been mined

and how can we acquire a fresh supply?

Perhaps the answer lies behind the sealed doors

of the largest gold depository in the world, fort knox.

U.S. Treasury secretary steven mnuchin

and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell

visit the united states bullion depository for an inspection.

They are part of the first civilian delegation to lay eyes

on the country's gold bullion reserves in more than 40 years.

But curiously, the media is prohibited from the event,

which starts to raise more questions than answers.

The depository at fort knox

is a symbol of perhaps america's greatest secret.

Uh, you are more likely to obtain

from the united states government the blueprints

for the construction of a nuclear weapon

than you are to obtain any accurate,

detailed accounting of the disposition

of the united states gold reserve.

Is there any gold in fort knox?

That's a good question, and the government

certainly hasn't been helpful in providing the answer.

One would think that there would be

some sort of accountability.

But there's substantial evidence

that the government is hiding something.

By law, the u.S. Treasury

operates fort knox under the direct orders

and supervision of the president of the united states.

And not only does the treasury print money, collect taxes

and enforce trade agreements,

it also oversees america's most precious commodity, its gold.

Militaries will pack

their pilot's survival kits with gold coins,

not with paper currency,

because gold is the universal money.

And its value determines the value of government currencies.

Gold's value also, uh, profoundly influences

interest rates, uh, and the price of government bonds.

This is the primary reason why governments

have always tried to control the price of gold.

The gold price is the determinant of the value

of all capital, labor, goods and services in the world.

There is nothing else.

As of 2020, the united states claimed

to have more than 8,000 tons of gold.

Worth trillions of dollars,

it is the single largest holding in the world.

Not entirely surprising, since there was a time,

in 1933, when u.S. President franklin d. Roosevelt

made it illegal for american individuals

to own the precious metal.

In 1933,

america nationalized its gold.

In essence, it stole it from the american people.

It required them to turn in all the gold that they had.

This was franklin roosevelt

bringing us out of the depression.

He gathered up gold coins and other gold that people owned

and melted them down into little gold bricks

that weighed 27 and a half pounds each.

Once he acquired all the gold in the country,

he doubled its value.

You could do that when you own it all.

Overnight, the gold went from $20.67 an ounce

to $35 an ounce.

The greatest robbery in history wasn't

the mere confiscation, it was revaluing the gold

after it was confiscated.

The difference is, the government had the profit,

not the individual people.

And that was the way that the new deal attempted

to jumpstart the economy.

Prior to this time,

every american dollar was backed up by gold.

It even said so right on the currency:

Payable to the bearer in gold.

But now, with america in the grip of the great depression,

the government couldn't take a chance that foreign governments

wouldn't trade currency for coin

and make off with america's gold supply.

In less than two years,

fdr had consolidated the single greatest concentration of wealth

in modern history.

And to house most of it,

he constructed the country's strongest fortress...

Fort knox.

The federal government is taking no chances.

This is the people's gold supply,

and they intend for it to stay there.

There's a military unit at fort knox

that is at all times responsible

if any attack was made on the gold vault.

And they're available all the time around the clock.

If you violated the security and got into the vault,

then no way you could get out of there.

You know, the reality of the situation is,

I don't think that anybody would ever try

to break into that building to steal the gold,

because it would take an incredible operation

to get that out of there, and the guards used to tell me,

"you'll get in, but you'll never get out alive."

If someone was fortunate enough

to make it inside fort knox, they would encounter a maze

of 21,000 cubic feet of granite and concrete,

and more than 1,400 tons of steel.

Underneath the first floor is the gold vault,

whose door weighs several tons and is 21 inches thick.

To unlock it requires multiple treasury officials,

each with a unique, secret combination.

Once inside, the vault is divided into individual cells,

said to measure ten feet by ten feet,

and reportedly stacked from floor to ceiling

with gold bars.

But while no one would argue that it's not important

to keep america's gold safe,

are all of these precautions really necessary?

Or do they serve another, more extraordinary purpose?

It's what you don't know

that's more important than what you do know,

as far as the gold vault is concerned.

And there's been various myths and rumors over the years

which have added to that... Secrecy.

One of those rumors suggests

that after president richard nixon removed the u.S. Dollar

from the international gold standard in 1971,

the gold in fort knox was all but sold off.

During the 1960s,

when charles de gaulle was prime minister of France,

he told other countries, "if you owe me money,

pay me in american dollars."

and then he would turn those american dollars in for gold.

That probably caused the biggest drain

of gold out of the bullion depository.

The u.S. Gold reserve was being depleted,

and in 1971, president nixon decided

that we could not afford

to keep losing our gold this way,

and, basically, he repudiated the obligation

of the united states to redeem its dollars for gold

to foreign countries.

And since 1971,

the u.S. Dollar has not been explicitly backed

by any particular weight of gold.

But how much of america's gold supply was left?

Rumors that fort knox had been steadily drained of gold

for decades began to spread,

and an anxious american public demanded to know:

Did president richard nixon

pull america off the gold standard

because the vault at fort knox was actually...

Empty?

Director of the u.S. Mint, mary brooks,

leads a carefully-selected group of members of congress

and news media on a half-hour tour of the fort knox vault.

To prove to congress,

and the american public,

that the gold at fort knox is, in fact, still there.

We arrived by bus, to drive up bullion blvd,

aptly named.

And as you approach the depository, you see signs

that warn that federal officers inside

are authorized to shoot to kill,

and that admission is absolutely forbidden.

We went down from the first floor

on by an elevator, went down

to the lower level where the gold is actually stored.

And as we got off the elevator,

we just walked in right next

to the vaults themselves,

the cells full of gold.

The delegation was ushered into one

of the smallest compartments... Vault 13...

And directed not to approach any of the other cells.

The thing that stands out to me is just walking in

and seeing all this gold

from floor to ceiling and realizing its value.

And we had an opportunity to pick it up

and feel it and make sure it was gold, and, uh,

it was amazing to me.

There's nothing

that was as breathtaking

as having the seal cut on that door,

the vault door open,

and the floodlights from the television

and from the still cameras, flashbulbs popping,

going off the gold.

Well, they opened up the bullion depository.

But what they did was they opened pandora's box.

Everybody saw a bunch of bars stacked up in a room,

and then immediately started saying,

that's probably all there was,

and what you're looking at is probably fake.

So, all they did was create a bigger problem.

Why had the visitors been shown only one cell?

And why was access to certain corners

of the vault complex denied?

Over time, photos taken during the event

began to circulate in newspapers and magazines.

But rather than reassure skeptics,

as the u.S. Treasury had hoped, still more questions arose.

Some even questioned the quality of the gold based on its color.

Others suggested that... According to photos taken

at the event while the gold was weighed on a scale...

The bars didn't weigh 27.5 pounds as reported,

but less than 22 pounds.

Of course treasury came out with a press release and said

"oh, well, it was just some cheap scale,

and so the scale was inaccurate."

but if you magnify the photograph,

you see that it was not a cheap scale.

It was a standard issue u.S. Postal scale.

Most intriguing of all was the possibility

of a secret vault... one hidden not only from visitors that day

but one whose very existence is denied,

even now.

There is this famous picture of mary brooks taken

by an ap photographer saying "look, all the gold's here."

however, the room that they showed

was gold vault number thirteen.

And if you just do a simple, napkin-like calculation

of how many bars you see, and,

uh, there are about a million ounces of gold in that room.

And yet, the latest treasury figures

from the treasury website show

that there are 150 million ounces of gold in fort knox.

So it would take 150 of those gold vault thirteens.

So clearly, something's amiss.

Can americans ever know for sure

how much gold is in fort knox?

Or whether most of the gold has been sold off, or used

as collateral to finance our national debt?

Secret things are done with that gold reserve.

That gold reserve is the... It's public property.

It's the property of all the people of the united states.

And the things that are done with it are meant

to undertake secret policies

without any accountability to congress

and the people of the united states.

That's objectionable.

I can tell you that when I was on

the congressional inspection tour,

there was gold in fort knox.

But knowing that the gold was there

in September of 1974 doesn't mean

that it's still there today.

One thing is certain.

Something of value is being heavily protected

inside fort knox.

And either it's the vast amount of fabled gold bars

that serve as the contents

of the world's greatest treasure fortress, or

it's the disturbing secret

that the vault is really empty.

But according to some experts,

it hardly matters, because they claim

that the largest collection of gold exists,

not in a vault on earth,

but somewhere else.

Somewhere literally

out of this world.

Nasa announces a new venture

with the trans astronautica corporation.

The goal? To develop technology

for a special mining operation

in outer space.

We incorporated transastra in 2015 when we saw

that spacex and elon musk

and jeff bezos and other entrepreneurs

were developing low-cost, really effective ways

to get into orbit.

Ignition. Lift off.

Once we have rockets that can get into orbit inexpensively,

then it makes sense to start building

real industries in space.

And one of the first industries is asteroid mining.

In the near future,

transastra and other companies

intend to mine asteroids

for valuable minerals, including gold.

But why asteroids?

Why not here on earth?

According to studies compiled by the u.S. Geological survey,

there are 57,000 tons of mineable gold on earth

that have not yet been excavated.

But with a global production rate of an estimated

3,300 tons per year, that would mean

that in less than 20 years,

there won't be any gold left on our planet to find.

So, if you want to acquire more gold in the future,

we will have to look for it

among the stars.

Precious metals

that we really value on the earth,

things like gold and platinum...

They're called "precious metals"

because they're not around much.

Question is, where are they?

Asteroids.

A lot of the asteroids are still in their pristine form

from how they first formed

at the beginning of the solar system.

You get a typical asteroid, a few hundred meters in diameter,

it will have more of those rare earth elements

than have been mined on earth in all of human history.

The asteroid belt could provide for the needs

of our civilization for many centuries,

maybe thousands of years into the future.

Explorers are always looking for new gold sources.

And it was a search for gold that ultimately led

to the discovery of america.

Gold has been there for a long time, central to our culture.

Gold has been money since 635 bc.

So, I guess the short answer to the question:

"why do we like gold?" is

because we always have.

Are we actually running out of gold on this planet?

Well, there are some who believe

that one day, perhaps in the not too distant future,

we might have to replace it with something else

like platinum or palladium.

Or maybe,

as mankind continues its exploration of the universe,

we will find vast new sources of gold

on asteroids or neighboring planets,

and we will have a limitless supply of the glittering metal

whose mysterious power over us has so far remained...

Unexplained.

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