gold in the Sun? You bet there is. Careful analysis of the Sun's spectrum shows that about 6 ten-billionths (0.0000000006) of the mass of the Sun consists of atoms of gold. Doesn't sound like much does it? But, because the Sun is so huge, this is a lot of gold! The Sun's mass is 2.0 x 1030 kg - that's

2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg But if 6 ten-billionths of the Sun's atoms are gold that gives a mass of 1.2 x 1021 kg (1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 kgs). That's a heap of gold! In fact, it's about the same mass as one of the largest asteroids like Ceres - and Ceres is 913 kilometers in diameter. Imagine an asteroid made of pure gold just floating in space waiting for you to get in your spaceship, fly off, pick it up and come back to Earth seriously rich!

At approximately £7 per gram, I reckon the Sun is worth about seven million nine hundred thousand billion billion pounds! £7,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 back to top