World’s most expensive substance costs £49,000,000,000,000 for just one gram
No matter how many places start raising their prices, paying more than a fiver for a pint or over a quid for a bar of chocolate still feels like a rip off.
But despite it feeling like you need to take a loan out to cover a night out, it’s got nothing on the cost of the world’s most expensive substance.
And no, it’s not the stuff Demi Moore was hooked on in her first major award-winning role last year.
There is another bit of a film link to the science though, thanks to 2009’s Angels & Demons with Tom Hanks.
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The substance in question cost an absolutely whopping £49 trillion for just one gram.
It’s not just something you can dig up like precious jewels or metals, as it has to be assembled atom by atom meaning it could take a billion years to gather just one tenth of a gram.
Yep, it’s antimatter which of course became something more of us knew about thanks to the mystery thriller. As the name suggests, it pretty much is like regular matter’s evil twin as just as is seen in Angels & Demons, when the pair meet, they totally destroy each other, letting off a s**t load of energy.
That’s part of what makes antimatter just so expensive to store and study, as it can disappear pretty much as soon as it can be produced.
I mean, the stuff will just explode if it comes into contact with ordinary particles - i.e., anything basically.
Back in 1999, NASA scientist Harold Gerrish estimated the price of this pricey substance to be $62.5 trillion, just based on the energy involved and what goes into having it made.
He did estimate that this mega cost would come down at some point, but scientists reckon it could actually have an even bigger price.
Particle physicist at CERN, Professor Michael Doser, told ABC News: “We make such minute quantities that even if you were to destroy all the antimatter that we're making in the course of a year, it wouldn't be even enough to boil a cup of tea.
“One 100th of a nanogram [of antimatter] costs as much as one kilogram of gold.”
While producing antimatter might cost a lot and take a lot of work, it’s widely believed that it holds the key to discovering more of the universe's several mysteries.
It could be incredibly helpful in fields such as medicine, but again, scarcity and cost of production have proved to be an issue. But thanks to discoveries and advancements in research, there is hope in solving the problems for scientists.
That pint is looking pretty cheap and easy now, right?
Jess Battison