China – which produces around 90% of the world's rare earth metals – claims that its mines might run dry in just 15-20 years. Likewise, if demand continues for , some say it will be gone in about 10 years; platinum in 15 years; and silver in 20 years.
Total worldwide reserves of platinum group metals are estimated to be some 70,000 metric tons. Almost all of it, some 90 percent, is located in the Earth's crust of South Africa. Far behind it, other major countries are Russia, Zimbabwe, the United States, and Canada.
Gold and other elements will run out by 2050
According to him, “in this scenario it is possible that the reserves of some of these elements will be exhausted in 2050 — such as gold and antimony — or in less than 100 years — in the case of molybdenum and zinc.”
The Earth has a limited amount of gold in its crust and experts are estimating that it may be unsustainable to mine gold by 2050. Compared to the nearly 4,000-7,000 year history of humans mining gold, that's barely a blink of an eye.
Is Metal a Non-Renewable Resource? Metal ores are regarded as non-renewable resources as they can take thousands, if not millions of years to replenish depending on type. This does not, however, mean that we are at risk of depleting the Earth's metal resources.
According to Professor Cribb, shortages of water, land, and energy combined with the increased demand from population and economic growth, will create a global food shortage around 2050.
Looking farther into the future, other sources claim that things like aluminum might run dry in about 80 years. indicate that rhodium, followed by gold, platinum and tellurium, are some of the rarest elements in terms of their percentage in the planet's crust and their importance to society.
We do know that gold makes up about four parts per billion of the earth's crust. What we don't know, however, is precisely how much gold is still out there. The WGC estimates that there are 54,000 tonnes of “below-ground gold reserves” waiting to be mined.
The short answer to the questions posed in this article title is: Yes! gold traces have indeed been identified within the lunar soil. Back in October 2009, NASA conducted a mission called LCROSS, which involved crashing a booster rocket into the Moon at nearly 6,000 miles per hour.
What makes Dahlonega gold so different from other gold found around the world is the purity. Dahlonega has the purest gold in the world, which is 98.7 percent pure.
It's not super likely we'll run out of titanium soon but if we did, there are a few other sources we could turn to. For example, there's an exoplanet light years away orbiting another sun called “WASP-19b” that has a titanium dioxide atmosphere!
For one thing, gold serves as a store of value, meaning that its value remains stable, rather than declining over time. Along these same lines, gold is useful as a hedge against inflation. Although inflation pushes down the value of currencies, gold isn't subject to this downward pressure.
Above-ground stocks
The best estimates currently available suggest that around 208,874 tonnes of gold has been mined throughout history, of which around two-thirds has been mined since 1950. And since gold is virtually indestructible, this means that almost all of this metal is still around in one form or another.
Platinum is 30 times more rare than gold. If all the platinum ever mined were melted and poured into an Olympic-sized pool, the platinum would barely reach your ankles. Gold, however, would fill three pools.
This is because platinum is rarer than gold, has a higher density and is purer. Platinum rings require more platinum than gold rings require gold, which can increase the overall cost. While gold can increase in value the higher the karat, platinum is almost always worth more than gold.
Psyche 16 is nestled between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and is made of solid metal. As well as gold, the mysterious object is loaded with heaps of platinum, iron and nickel. In total, it's estimated that Psyche's various metals are worth a gargantuan $10,000 quadrillion.
Psyched for Psyche
Unlike most rocky, icy asteroids, the Psyche asteroid—located between Mars and Jupiter—contains a motherlode of metal, including gold, iron, and nickel. And the estimated value of all that metal? About $700 quintillion.
Magnesium, aluminium, titanium, iron, and chromium are relatively common in them. In addition, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, niobium, molybdenum, lanthanum, europium, tungsten, and gold have been found in trace amounts.
Source: Office of the Chief Economist. Australia is estimated to have the world's largest gold reserves, with 9,500 tonnes or 17 per cent of the total world estimated gold reserves of 57,000 tonnes. Geoscience Australia estimates that 60 per cent of Australia's gold reserves are in Western Australia.
Estimates by the Geological Survey of Victoria indicate that 75 Moz of undiscovered gold may occur in the Stawell, Bendigo and Melbourne zones1, while several multi-million ounce deposits in Victoria potentially remain undiscovered.
Examples of primary deposits include those mined at Kalgoorlie in the Super Pit, Granny Smith, St Ives, Norseman and Mount Magnet (WA), Gympie and Ravenswood (Qld), Callie (NT), Stawell (Vic), Cadia (NSW), Henty (Tas) and Challenger (SA). At Olympic Dam (SA) gold occurs and is mined with copper and uranium.
Here we'll discuss a few actual rare metals, present in the earth in miniscule amounts but which have important applications nonetheless. The rarest stable metal is tantalum. The rarest metal on earth is actually francium, but because this unstable element has a half life of a mere 22 minutes, it has no practical use.
As per the above discussion titanium is the metal of the future because it is comparatively more useful and efficient compared to steel, copper, iron, etc. Titanium is also called the metal of hope.
Iron is the most abundant element on earth but not in the crust. The extent of the accessible iron ore reserves is not known, though Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute suggested in 2006 that iron ore could run out within 64 years (that is, by 2070), based on 2% growth in demand per year.