1Hi, it's Doug.
2Gold - some people are obsessed with it.
3They love the look of gold.
4I, myself, have a few things lying around here which look gold.
5This Minecraft pickaxe.
6A trophy.
7Even this little nugget I picked up at a rock shop.
8You might recognize it as fool's gold.
9It's not real gold, but you get the idea.
10Someone named Janvi has a question about gold.
11Let's give her a call now.
12Hi, Doug.
13Hi, Janvi.
14I have a question for you.
15How is gold made?
16That's a great question.
17Look around you.
18You probably can find something that looks like it's gold too.
19A gold fidget spinner.
20Maybe you've got a gold trophy.
21A doorknob, even.
22But all of these things are just gold-colored.
23They're not real gold.
24Real gold is its own thing, its own material.
25If you want to find actual gold,
26chances are it's going to be something more expensive.
27Like, maybe one of your parents has a real gold necklace or a gold ring.
28Those cost a bit more.
29That's the thing about real gold, it's a really valuable material.
30It's worth a lot of money.
31One ounce of real gold, that's the amount of gold in a coin about this size,
32is worth... well, what would you guess?
33A hundred dollars?
34Nope.
35Five hundred dollars?
36Nope.
37One ounce of gold is worth over a thousand dollars.
38It's one thing to find a penny or a nickel lying on a sidewalk somewhere.
39Imagine if you found a coin like this instead.
40But where does real gold come from?
41Is it something we can make?
42What do you think?
43People who work with metal can take a piece of gold and heat it.
44Then they can shape it into what they want, like a gold coin or into a piece of gold jewelry.
45But that's always starting out with a piece of gold to begin with.
46Gold isn't something we can make out of some other material.
47Instead, gold is something that has to be found or dug out of the earth.
48When it's found, it often looks like this: a gold nugget.
49Or sometimes it's found as little gold flakes,
50which gold miners have to pick out of the gravel along the bottom of a river.
51And to find even a tiny flake is incredibly difficult.
52In fact, if it were any easier to find, gold wouldn't be worth so much.
53That's a big part of why gold is so expensive.
54There just isn't that much of it to be found anywhere on Earth.
55Now, there have been a few places on Earth
56where, a long time ago, people did find more gold than usual.
57Like places near Alaska, in California, in Australia.
58These are all places where a gold rush happened.
59Places where a few people discovered some gold nuggets on the ground.
60And then, very quickly, lots of people rushed in to try to find all the gold they could.
61These people were hoping to get rich fast.
62In all of these places, we think that most of the gold has now been found
63and turned into coins, bars, and jewelry.
64But even with all that gold that's been found,
65there still isn't that much of it.
66Scientists estimate that if you could pile up all of the gold that's ever been found,
67all the necklaces, bars, you name it,
68it would just barely be enough gold to fill up the same amount of space as just two swimming pools.
69That's it.
70For the entire world, that's all the gold there is.
71Still, what about stories of buried treasure?
72A treasure chest filled with gold coins?
73Could you ever find something like that?
74Believe it or not, a few years ago,
75a couple living in California was out on a walk near their home
76when one of them noticed a rusted metal can sticking up out of the ground.
77As they dug around, they found several more,
78each filled with real gold coins.
79It's thought that these coins were buried by someone after the California Gold Rush.
80For some reason, the person buried their treasure and somehow forgot all about it.
81Or maybe they died before telling anyone where they were.
82The couple that found the coins got to keep them.
83And altogether, they were worth over 10 million dollars.
84This isn't even the first time something like this has happened.
85Just a few weeks ago, in the basement of an old theater in Italy,
86someone found a jar filled with hundreds of ancient gold coins.
87Could there be hidden treasure buried somewhere near where you live?
88You never know.
89So, in summary, real gold isn't something that's made, it's found.
90It's incredibly rare, which is part of why it's so valuable.
91That's all for this week's question.
92Thanks, Janvi, for asking it.