The key words in your statement are “at present.”
Quantum computers, AI and yet-to-be discovered processes are very likely to change that. When you start at a sub-nano level things start to look very different.
An example of a quantum process in everyday life is a leaf on a tree, photosynthesis is a quantum process.
This is what you wrote. How will this be done? It has been the dream of alchemists for centuries.
It would take adding or subtracting neutrons, protons, and electrons from other elements. And gold is very noble. (Non-reactive)
To be clear, this is what I wrote: “Technology has the potential to change the current scarcity of gold. It’s very likely that, barring the destruction of human life and thus man-made technology, that someone will come up with a way to create gold from scratch or devise a way to pull gold from where it currently is stored in or on our planet. When that happens gold will lose the feature of scarcity an thus it’s value as a medium of exchange for things of value.”
I think that it’s very likely that future yet-to-be-discovered technology will eventually lead to a much larger physical and potential global supply of gold. That event would make a significant impact on it’s value.
To answer your question, it could theoretically be done by using a quantum (or quantum-like) process possibly mimicking the processes that took place immediately after the singularity, (the big bang) in which atoms of base matter were formed.
Not in my lifetime.
Did you think we would be producing synthetic diamonds in your lifetime ?
Totally. Creating the right crystalline structure using the basic carbon atom is easy-peasy compared to creating elements from other elements on the atomic level. Which we can do… but whereas the ASIC (“all in sustaining cost”) for gold miners now is $1,200 per ounce, to do it the atomic way would be i-can’t-even-begin-to-imagine-how-expensive! $12 billion per ounce? IDK
Gold is $3411 now. Really, don’t buy any now, you’d be chasing it the saw way you chased tech, real estate, Bitcoin, Beanie Babies, etc
Based on our ability to consistently make technological gains at an ever-increasing pace, plain old country-boy logic would lean toward a continuation of that phenomena.
Quantum computers will provide a way to radically accelerate experimentation. What has always been the tried-and-proven scientific method of taking an idea, building a physical model and evaluating it’s performance to see if the idea has merit will be able to be done in minutes instead of months or years.
The real value of Quantum Computing lies in its ability to do simulations of physical events in the real world before going into production. It has the ability to increase the inventive talent of one brilliant mind a million+ times over.
I would like to learn more about Quantum Computing. What are good sources of information for beginners?
You may want to start with the basics of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Entanglement. Solving the coherence problem is the current major hurdle that they are currently trying to solve and that has to do with Quantum Entanglement.
Don’t get discouraged, it’s a very non-intuitive subject that most people find difficult to understand but if you immerse yourself in it for a while you’ll start to grasp the potential that Quantum Computers will make available to humankind.
We can make long-chain hydrocarbons out of carbon and hydrogen atoms, but the energy it would take would be greater than the energy the synthetic hydrocarbons would produce.
But to create the most noble element out of other elements’ atoms would be even one step further in wasted energy.
The most costly input to gold mining is… the cost of diesel fuel. Or in the old days, the cost to feed and house an indentured or bound forced laborer!
In the past, large concentrated deposits of gold have been found. Reportedly, largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, had a calculated refined weight of 97.14 kilograms (3,123 ozt).
If there is a predictable pattern to the global distribution of concentrated gold deposits, tomorrow’s gold prospectors using quantum computers will likely be the first to find them.
I am a Geophysicist, and I use today’s supercomputers to look for oil, not gold, but the technology is parallel. While quantum computing would be very useful and welcome for Geophysical data analysis, it will make a difference to discovery rates on the margins. Quantum computing won’t put gold in the earth where there is none. Quantum computing won’t alleviate above-ground problems (raising capital, labor issues, regulations, security {one of my holdings, Vizsla, is having problems with the Sinaloa cartel}).
What do you mean by the term “on the margins”? The margins of proven sources? unfettered access? marginal productive potential? profit margins?
I mean it will make an incremental difference.
The greatest cost or difficulty in measuring whether there is gold (or any other ore) present in the earth are measurements. You either directly measure by drilling holes and pulling up core samples or running well logs… or you run helicopters or fixed wing aircraft to measure gravity, magnetic field, radiation… or you put physical sensors on the ground to measure electric fields or seismic waves. All of these are costly, and all of them have limitations, and none of them can be conjured up by a computer… they are INPUTS to a computer.
You would be correct in your assumptions if a quantum computer ran a program that depended on data points gathered the same way and processed the same way that they are on today’s computers. Running the same program faster wouldn’t make much difference. But that’s not how it will be done.
The thing that quantum computers do infinitely better than today’s computers is run simulations. Based on available information about gold production and known data from a given area, a quantum machine will provide the ability to run countless simulations and predict the location of the targeted material.
There’s about 1.7 billion cubic miles that make up the earth’s continental crust. People using quantum computers will probably be able to predict deposits of gold in most of that area to the closest 10 meters or so in less than 10 years of beginning the project.
You see, not only is H200h is an expert on dentistry, but a crackerjack geophysicist as well!
That IBM training beats any graduate degree program anyone can obtain!
Funny comment… Hmmm… There’s gotta be a reason Henrius feels compelled to attack me.
Maybe staring down into people’s wide open mouths all day long, day after day, causes strange and unpredictable psychological and emotional anomalies.
or…
Maybe it’s due to a steady diet of one-way conversations where the patients can’t talk back. 
Good. Just the person I want to ask a question. I have asked it to scientists of various types, and nobody can answer definitively.
Hydrocarbons are stored within the earth’s crust. When they are harvested and sold, most are combusted. Combustion produces BOTH CO2 AND H2O. Everyone talks about the CO2, but where is all the water going?
In fact, a chemist told me the total amount of water in the world in ice, liquid, and vapor is fairly constant. How can this be if hydrocarbons are constantly being combusted? Is all the water being created being reabsorbed by plant growth? If it is, CO2 should be being reabsorbed by the same plants, and not accumulating, as environmentalists claim.