$83 billion has been sat underground in ‘supergiant’ deposit that geologists have just come across
Discoveries like this don't come around often
Chinese geologists have just discovered a 'supergiant' deposit which could be worth a staggering $83 billion.
While most of us would be happy with discovering £20 in an old coat, or getting some extra spending money from your Grandma in your birthday card, experts over in China reckon they might have just found the largest deposit of any precious metal in existence today.
Although gold is perhaps the most well-known precious metal, since it features so heavily in jewellery and heists in TV and film, iridium, osmium, ruthenium, and palladium are all potentially higher in value than good auld gold.
However, the team of ore-prospectors certainly won't have been complaining when they recently found the hefty mass of gold in the Wangu gold field in the Hunan province.
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According to Chinese state media, a team of geologists detected over 40 gold veins of roughly 330 tons of gold ore dipping 6,600 feet deep under the field, but 3D modelling suggests that number could be far greater, suggesting there could be 1,100 tons going as deep as 9,800 feet below the surface.
If those numbers prove to be accurate, with the rapidly rising price of gold, the discovery could be worth around $83 billion, which is just below the net worth of the top 20 richest people in the world.
While it might be spare change for the world's richest man Elon Musk, or the woman who's bizarre receipt suggested she briefly overtook him in that position, the sum is enough to make us all consider a career change and think more about the prospect of prospecting.
“Many drilled rock cores showed visible gold,” said Chen Rulin, an ore-prospecting expert at China’s Hunan Province’s Geological Bureau.
If the 3D modelling is accurate, the field will also take the title of the largest gold mine in the world, overtaking South Africa’s South Deep gold mine with its 1,025 tons of gold, according to Mining Technology.
Considering China is one of the world's top producers, largest importers, and largest consumers of gold, this money-spinning discovery can only be a good thing for the country's economy.
Clearly if we're looking to make massive money, we should ignore online scams and instead start looking under fields, as one fortunate farmer managed to find over $600 million of Pablo Escobar's money on his land, although he did the honest thing and handed it over to police.
Another man in France found luck in his own back garden, literally striking gold as he dug things up to try and build a swimming pool, which may now be filled with money rather than water and chlorine.
James Moorhouse