Where is Gold Most Abundant in the Solar System? To answer this question, we first need to understand where gold in our Solar System comes from.
According to a popular view within the scientific community, our universe was born about 13.8 billion years ago, initially consisting only of very light elements, mainly hydrogen, helium, and heavy metals like gold. Other elements did not exist in the universe at that time.
Initially, the universe consisted only of very light elements, mainly hydrogen and helium…
The so-called nuclear fusion refers to the process where lighter nuclei combine to form heavier nuclei. For example, hydrogen can be fused into helium, and helium can be fused into carbon. As nuclear fusion of heavier elements is triggered, higher temperatures are required. Thus, only in very large stars can the core achieve sufficient temperature and pressure, subsequently beginning a cycle of nuclear fusion, combining heavier and heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon.
A reasonable guess is that in the Solar System, the Sun contains the most gold.
However, when nuclear fusion transitions to iron, it can no longer continue, as iron fusion does not release energy but rather absorbs energy from its own gravitational force, causing the star to collapse rapidly.
At the same time, the electrons in the star’s core material are compressed into the nucleus by extreme pressure, combining with protons to form neutrons. A violent explosion occurs, known as a “supernova explosion.”
Neutron capture is a reaction in which lighter nuclei collide with neutrons to form heavier nuclei. After the neutron capture process occurs, the nuclei often become unstable, in which case they become unstable in terms of their atomic number.
For instance, if an iron-56 nucleus captures a neutron, it becomes iron-57, and when a neutron in its nucleus undergoes beta decay, its atomic number increases by 1, turning it into cobalt-57.
As the name suggests, a neutron star is a planet mainly composed of neutrons; they are actually the dense cores of massive stars left over from supernova explosions.
When the Solar System was born, there was also a certain amount of gold in the original nebula.
When two neutron stars collide, a violent explosion occurs, and a large number of neutrons are ejected. After losing the gravitational constraints, some neutrons soon decay into protons, electrons, and neutrons, and subsequently, lighter elements are formed (where nuclear fusion reactions occur), leading to the phenomenon of “rapid neutron capture,” resulting in a significant number of heavy elements, with gold being one of them.
The Solar System was born. There was also a certain amount of gold in the original nebula, but this gold distribution in the nebula must have been relatively uniform.
Therefore, a reasonable guess is that in the Solar System, the Sun contains the most gold, as it accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the entire Solar System. Is this truly the case? The answer is yes.
As early as 2014, scientists determined the gold content in the Sun through spectral analysis, and this ratio is approximately 8 gold atoms for every trillion hydrogen atoms. The total amount of gold reaches 2.34×10^21 kg, equivalent to 23.4 billion tons.
To help you visualize, if all the gold in the Sun were extracted and formed into a cube, the cube would have a side length of about 495 km. If that’s still hard to imagine, note that the altitude of the International Space Station in space is 400 km—meaning if we placed this cube on the surface of Earth, its height would exceed the orbit of the space station by about 95 km.
