10 Most EXPENSIVE Substances On Earth

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[Music] [Applause] for eons humans have valued certain substances more than others nearly every culture on earth has a history of using semi-precious stones for currency or religious rituals until recently many countries even use the gold standard as a basis for their currency but while materials like gold silver and bronze are the most commonly referenced precious substances they are far from the most valuable from radioactive isotopes to ultra rare elements we are counting down the top 10 most expensive materials on earth [Music] lysergic acid diethylamide better known as LSD or its street name acid is the single most popular synthetic psychedelic drug in the world first synthesized by a Swiss scientist in the 1930s it was popularized in the 1960s by counterculture icons like Ken Cassie and Timothy Leary their goal is to make the substance free and available to the general public but more than 50 years later it's still one of the most expensive materials in the world selling for an average of twenty five hundred dollars a gram part of the issue is that a very small dosage is necessary to attain psychoactive effects the average dosage of LSD ranges from 100 to 200 micrograms meaning that a dealer will sell almost 10,000 doses in a single gram while the 60s counterculture movement used the drug to escape the problems of society the Western intelligence community in the military saw it as a potential chemical weapon in 1951 these organizations began a series of experiments us researchers noted that LSD is capable of rendering whole groups of people including military forces indifferent to their surroundings and situations interfering with planning and judgment and even creating apprehension uncontrollable confusion and terror experiments and the possible use of LSD to change the personalities of intelligence targets and to control whole populations continued until the United States officially ban the drug in 1967 since then it's only been available in the black market driving up its price [Music] lutonium is a radioactive element first discovered in 1941 by a pair of American scientists its most well known for its role in the Manhattan Project in which the American military built the world's first atomic bombs The Fatman bombs used in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945 and in the bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945 had plutonium coarse human radiation experiments studying plutonium were conducted without informed consent and several accidents that some lethal occurred after the war the element is extremely unstable and difficult to handle meaning that a handful of scientists on earth have access to it this rarity causes the price to rise and this race the $3,900 a grand the secondary use of plutonium is for energy production butoh neum 238 is used to make electricity for space probes using radioisotope thermoelectric generators these generators are switched on when the probes can't get enough solar power because they've traveled too far away from the Sun some probes that use plutonium 238 or Cassini and Galileo according to the world nuclear Association over one third of the energy produced and most nuclear power plants comes from plutonium lutonium is the main fuel in fast-neutron reactors however plutonium has an incredibly long half-life and there is already an environmental crisis surrounding where to put the remnant waste when you think of precious stones you're likely thinking of sapphires rubies and emeralds with one stone is worth more than all of these despite being lesser-known found almost exclusively in Myanmar pay night can easily fetch the astounding price of $8,500 a gram pay night is named after arthur charles davy paint english gem collector who first recognized the mineral paint on forms elongated transparent deep garnet red crystals play a claw RISM is ruby red and pale orange or red orange the first pay night specimen a single crystal was identified as a new gem species in 1957 until 2001 only two more crystals were found since then more pay nights have been discovered over a thousand crystals and fragments have now been recovered but most of this material isn't usable in jewelry pay Knights extreme rarity is due to it containing the chemical elements Serco Neum and boron which do not normally associate with each other in nature and don't occur together in any other mineral ironically some pay nine crystals are partly altered to a crust of small pink crystals of the more common Ruby while it is still far from a household name pay knight will continue to be extreme valuable until Morris found red barrel is an extremely rare variety of barrel that receives its red color from trace amounts of manganese in the entire world crystal suitable for cutting gems have been found in only one location the ruby violet claims in the Wawa mountains of Beaver County Utah the Utah Geological Survey estimated that one crystal of red barrel is found for every 150,000 gem quality diamonds the raspberry red crystals were first discovered in 1904 by the mineralogist Maynard Bixby and named fix fight in his honor the term has since been discouraged by the world jewelry Confederation to avoid confusion with the rare black mineral Bixby Ike also named for Maynard Bixby though red barrel is now the more accepted term the trade name vics fight is still in use red barrel is a rare mineral because its formation requires a unique geochemical environment first the element beryllium must be present in large enough amounts to form minerals second manganese must be present and available at the same time and location third the correct geochemical conditions must be present for beryllium manganese aluminum silicon and oxygen to crystallize into red barrel for gem quality red barrel deformed fractures and cavities must also be able to serve as a space for nice crystals to grow the rarity of red barrel means it regularly fetches nine thousand dollars a gram taffey it-- is a gorgeous and incredibly rare mineral in gemstone it's color is usually a lilac or mouth button also appear as a brownish red pink purple Lewis green as well as transparent the story of its discovery is different from any other gen it was discovered by Austrian gemologist Richard taffy in 1945 as cut and polished gem samples in a jeweler shop in Dublin Ireland before taffy found this new gem taffy I'd was wrongly identified as spinal a group of magnesium aluminium minerals taffy notice that unlike spinal these stones showed signs of double refraction he took the samples to be W Anderson of the laboratory of London Chamber of Commerce to identify the stones it wasn't until 1951 that a chemical and x-ray analysis showed that taffy yet was not spinal and in fact a new rare gem now that taffy odd has been identified as a distinct species more taffy ID is being discovered to date sri lanka Tanzania and Burma have been the only sources for this material with most samples coming from sri lanka but it is expected that taffy eyed specimens may eventually be found in other spinal mining locations such as madagascar taffy it-- is sold for a standard price of twenty thousand dollars for a single gram tritium is a radioactive form or isotope of hydrogen it has two neutrons where regular hydrogen does not have any which makes tritium unstable and therefore radioactive it is produced naturally from interactions of cosmic rays with gases in the upper atmosphere tritium emits electrons through beta decay and when they interact with a phosphor material light is emitted through the process of phosphorescence in layman's terms that means that its substance actively produces light in certain conditions it can be seen glowing in a variety of colors miraculously this radioactive substance does not pose a serious health threat to those who use it tritium is a relatively weak source of beta radiation the beta particle itself does not have enough energy to penetrate the skin however it can pose a health risk if taken directly into the body in extremely large quantities for example a person will need to take in billions of batgirls before seeing a health effect direct short-term exposure to small amounts of tritium is mostly harmless if a tritium tube breaks once a beat the area and allow the gas to diffuse into the air tritium exists naturally in the environment but in very small quantities tritium is also used as a tracer in biomedical and academic research some countries use tritium as fuel for thermonuclear weapons although many are committed to nuclear non-proliferation in the future tritium may also be used to generate electricity in fusion reactors which are currently under development tritium is sold for an astounding $30,000 a gram here's a familiar substance with a notoriously high price tag Diamond is the most concentrated form of pure carbon in the natural world and the strongest mineral on earth far exceeding other carbon allotropes such as graphite and fuller I the secret to Diamond superior strength is found on the molecular level diamonds require environments of at least 752 degrees fahrenheit in 430 4113 pounds per square inch the most favorable diamond forming conditions can be found about 100 miles underground hundreds of millions of years ago eruptions of magma from the mantle propelled natural diamonds closer to the Earth's surface the funnel shaped area is carved out by the magma eruptions are called kimberlite pipes named for the first formation discovered in Kimberley South Africa the rarity and the scarce supply of diamonds have made diamonds a precious commodity of course the advent of lab-grown diamonds has lower the price and there's a huge discrepancy depending on the quality but diamonds are regularly sold for $50,000 a gram the most authentic man-made diamonds today are manufactured by subjecting pure carbon to intense heat and pressure in a simulation of the organic process with the naked eye these synthetic diamonds are indistinguishable from natural ones coming in at number 3 is California californium is a synthetic radioactive element not found in nature the pure metal is silvery light malleable and so soft it can be easily sliced with a razor blade californium is moderately chemically reactive it slowly tarnishes in air at room temperature small pieces of the metal begin to oxidize but not violently the element was first synthesized in 1950 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by bombarding curium with alpha particles the principle use of californium is in nuclear power plants though a majority of plants use plutonium californium 245 is the source of radiation for the treatment of a wide variety of cancers the medical community was struggling to effectively treat cervical cancer using radiation therapy when they started using californium 245 to bombard tumors with neutrons more lives were being saved californium 245 Neutron therapy involves inserting a californium 245 implant near the tumors so the neutrons strike the tumors more directly which saves the healthy surrounding tissue from being damaged by the treatment because of its rarity and potential use in both the realms of medicine and power californium is sold for around 2 million dollars for a single gram this one's a mouthful fullerenes are a remarkable class of molecules in which large numbers of carbon molecules are locked together into a roughly spherical shape their construction roughly resembles the interlocked trusses of buckminster fuller's famous geodesic domes which is why these molecules are called fullerenes or bucky balls in the medical field elements such as helium can be used as chemical tracers and impregnated bucky balls water-soluble derivatives of bucky balls were discovered to exert an inhibition on the three isoforms of nitric oxide synthase with slightly different reactions the optical absorption properties of bucky balls matched solar spectrum in a way that suggests that buckminsterfullerene based films could be useful for energy sources although they are fascinating from a purely scientific point of view their utilitarian value is not so clear according to an expert to date no products based on fullerenes have had a significant financial impact that's not to say that such products will not ever exist it's only to say that the fullerene based field of Materials Research is young that opportunities remain to be explored and exploited and that the jump from discovery to widespread application takes time even though they do not yet have a specific use they are the source of ongoing testing and are worth 150 million dollars a gram coming in at number 1 is an extremely mysterious substance even understanding antimatter requires a good deal of explanation every particle has an antiparticle with the same mass but the opposite electric charge the proton has the negatively charged anti proton and the electron has the positively charged anti electron or positron the BIGBANG should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe but today everything we see from the smallest life-forms on earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of matter comparatively there's not much antimatter to be found something must have happened to tip the balance one of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter or why we see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter antimatter particles share the same mass as their matter counterparts but qualities such as electric charge or opposite the positively charged positron for example is the antiparticle to the negatively charged electron matter and antimatter particles are always produced as a pair and if they come in contact and violate one another leaving behind pure energy during the first fractions of a second of the Big Bang the hot and dense universe was buzzing with particle-antiparticle pairs popping in and out of existence if matter and antimatter are created and destroyed together it seems the universe should contain nothing but leftover energy because of its mysterious nature and myriad potential uses NASA estimates that antimatter is worth sixty two point five trillion dollars for a single gram

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Keywords: most expensive, substances, most expensive materials, on earth, most expensive substances, most expensive things, price comparison, antimatter, diamonds, gold, most valuable material, gems, crystal, rare, rarest in the world, elements, materials, top 10, viral, new

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Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019

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