15 Most Expensive Substances In The World.
What are the most expensive substances in the world? How much antimatter costs? What is the rarest substance known to man? What is the most expensive substance by weight? Why is Zolgensma so expensive? People are curious and like to know about the biggest/smallest/fastest/slowest/cutest and, of course, incredibly expensive items. Keep in mind that some of the substances are prohibited, others are useless, and others are even dangerous.
15. Saffron.
Cost: starting from $10 per gram/ $10000 per kg.
Where to find: Saffron is a spice that originates from saffron crocus and grows mostly in Iran, Greece, Morocco and India.
What to do with it: You need over 150 flowers to make just 1 gram of saffron. And the spice that can be found in your cupboard at home could well be fake.For hundreds of years saffron was used as a spice, a medicine and a dye.
14. Platinum.
Cost: $35 per gram/ $1088 per ounce.
Where to find: about 80% of platinum is mined in South Africa. Around 10% is mined in Russia and the rest is found in North and South America.
What to do with it: Platinum, iridium, osmium, palladium, ruthenium, and rhodium are all members of the same group of metals (called the platinum metals) and share similar properties. These metals are often used together to create highly durable parts for various machines, tools and jewelry. Platinum is used in several anti-cancer drugs because of its very low reactivity levels. Platinum is also used in pacemakers, dental crowns, and other equipment used within the human body because of its resistance to corrosion from bodily fluids.
13. Beluga caviar.
Cost: starting from $50 per gram/ $1000 per ounce
Where to find: Beluga sturgeon is found in the Caspian Sea and Black Sea basin (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, China, Russia, Romania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Iran)
What to do with it: Beluga caviar is eaten cold and usually served by itself. It is rarely served on toasts, on big pancakes (blini) or with potatoes.
12. Gold.
Cost: about $57 per gram/ $1785 per ounce.
Where to find: Gold is one of the valuable precious metals and a rare natural mineral. In its natural form, gold is found in deep earth layers. Gold was also found in ancient rocks by geologists.
What to do with it: Besides jewelry, gold is used in electronics, dentistry, aerospace, finance, architecture and medicine.
11. Rhino horn.
Cost: from $60 to $110 per gram.
Where to find: In the countries of South-East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia and Malaysia). In nature, the substance is usually found attached to a rhinoceros. The animals themselves can be found in Africa and Asia.
What to do with it: Rhino poaching appeared mostly because rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine, but increasingly common is its use as a status symbol to display success and wealth. In China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, the horn is believed to heal cancer, fever and other diseases, and also serves as an aphrodisiac. Therefore, African poachers regularly kill rhinos and trade their remains on the black market. According to rough estimates, since 2007, at least 7,100 of these animals have been slaughtered in Africa, and there are about 25,000 of them left. Recently, however, the demand for the product has decreased, because China has begun to fight this trade.
From a medical point of view, swallowing crushed horn is no more beneficial than biting nails. After all, rhino horns are composed of keratin. Their treatment of fever or cancer is superstition that is not confirmed by anything. So rhinos are dying completely in vain.
10. Crème de la Mer.
Cost: $70 per gram/ $95 for 0.5 oz.
Where to find: In beauty shops, of course.
What to do with it: Warm it for a few seconds between the fingers until it becomes translucent, then press gently into the skin and you will look incredible…for someone who spent so much for face crème…
9. Rhodium.
Cost: $678 per gram/ $21,100 per ounce.
Where to find: In native platinum, mainly in South Africa, as well as in Canada, Colombia and Russia.
What to do with it: Rhodium is the most expensive and hardest of the noble metals. It costs more than gold and platinum, but outwardly looks like silver.
Rhodium is not used to create jewelry - it is too expensive. It is also very fragile. Instead, it is applied to the surface of jewelry to increase its durability. This is called rhodium plating.
Besides that rhodium is the element that is used in the electronics and glass industry, to create neutron flux detectors in nuclear reactors and as a catalyst in the production of nitric acid.
8. LSD (acid)
Cost: about $3,000 per gram in its purest crystalline form.
Where to find: you’d better not look for it.
What to do with it: LSD is d-lysergic acid diethylamide, a psychedelic that causes violent hallucinations in humans. It was discovered by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann and it was used immediately - at first by accident, and then he got addicted.
LSD is made from ergot, a fungus that causes ergotism, a disease that causes hallucinations, gangrene and convulsions. The creation of LSD is prohibited by law in most countries of the world, which is why the substance is so expensive.
7. Tritium.
Cost: $30,000 per gram
Where to find: Tritium Extraction Facility, Savannah River, USA; "Mayak" Company, Ozersk, Russia; Ontario Hydro, Darlington Nuclear Power Plant, Canada. In nature, it is found in the upper layers of the atmosphere when cosmic radiation particles collide with the nuclei of nitrogen atoms.
What to do with it: The most abundant substance in the universe is hydrogen. That is why it is so cheap. It is all the more funny that the radioactive isotope of hydrogen tritium, on the contrary, is quite expensive.
Tritium is produced in nuclear reactors by irradiating lithium-6 with neutrons. It costs about $30 million to create one kilogram of this substance.
Tritium is a transparent invisible gas. There is an urban myth connected with this that is told by employees of the High-tech Research Institute of Inorganic Materials. They say that once the officials came there with a check and demanded to show them the tritium. Scientists could not do this and that is why they were scolded. But, in general, tritium glows in concentrated form, so it is added to key rings, watch hands and medical devices.
It is also used as fuel in thermonuclear reactors and hydrogen bombs are charged with it. And tritium is also used for fueling low-power generators, for example, in medical devices.
6. Painite.
Cost: up to $300,000 per gram or up to $60,000 per carat.
Where to find: Natural deposits in Mogok and Kachin counties in Myanmar. The first painite specimen, a single crystal, was identified as a new gem species in 1957. Until 2001, only two more crystals were found.
What to do with it: If you think that diamonds are girl's best friend, then here's a piece of a more expensive gem for you. This is painite - a mineral from the class of borates (Sasha Baron Cohen has nothing to do with it, the salts of orthoboric acid are called so), the rarest and most expensive in the world.
Until 2005, only 25 pieces of painite were known scattered in private collections and museums. Later, a deposit was discovered in Myanmar, which brought several more crystals, albeit of worse quality. Painite color ranges from ruby red to brownish orange. Although painites do have great resistance to scratching, they may also contain inclusions and fractures that make them susceptible to impacts from everyday wear or heat and vibrations from mechanical cleaning systems.
5. Zolgensma.
Cost: about $390,000 per gram.
Where to find: laboratory of the Novartis company, Basel, Switzerland.
What to do with it: Onsemnogen abeparvovec (commercial name - "Zolgensma") is the world's first drug for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy(SMA). It is an inherited condition that prevents people from moving, swallowing and holding their head. Although there is a type of SMA that manifests itself in adulthood, atrophy most often develops in the first 18 months of life. One of the most common causes of child mortality among those associated with heredity. The SMA gene is carried by one person in every 40-60 people on the planet.
For a long time, it was believed that SMA is basically incurable, but in 2019, a cure was still found. But it is extremely difficult to manufacture, so a 5.5 ml dose of Zolgensma costs $2.125 million. The drug got into the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive drug in the world. The prohibitive cost of the drug has been a source of criticism since it was approved.
4. Regolith.
Cost: $4.28 millions per gram
Where to find: The Moon, as well as any planets with solid surface and asteroids.
What to do with it: Regolith is simply soil, loose rocks that cover the surface of celestial bodies. The closest source of regolith to us is the Moon.
Regolith consists of various minerals and igneous rocks, as well as glass that is formed in places where meteorites fall when sand is exposed to high temperatures. According to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, if you place regolith in the earth's atmosphere, it will smell like fumes and shot pistons.
In total, about 324 g of regolith are stored on Earth, collected by the Soviet automatic stations "Lunniks", 382 g from six "Apollos" and 1,731 grams brought by Chinese stations. Some of the Apollo astronauts' instruments, smeared with moon dust, were auctioned off. In addition, 0.6 grams of regolith delivered by Luna-24 was sold at Sotheby's in 1993 for $442,500. This was an expensive but not particularly useful purchase.
3. Californium 252.
Cost: up to $27 millions per gram
Where to find: Research Institute in Dimitrovgrad, Russia; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.
What to do with it: Californium-252 is a radioactive chemical element that is extremely unstable and expensive to manufacture. It is a silvery white metal.
There are also rarer and more valuable elements, but this one stands out in that at least it has practical applications, unlike, for example, francium. Californium is used in a nuclear reactor as a neutron source. It can also be used to treat some types of brain and cervical cancer. In addition, Californium is found in oil and coal detectors and some metal detectors.
2. Astatine.
Cost: from $1 billion per gram
Where to find: In different countries of the world there are 36 cyclotrons capable of producing astatine. In addition, about 1 gram of astatine (approximately) is present in the earth's crust.
What to do with it: Astatine is the rarest element in the periodic table in the world. It is easier to create it artificially than to find it in nature. But even in the laboratory, no more than a few nanograms of astatine can be synthesized.
Strictly speaking, it is impossible to get enough astatine to just see it. Most likely, it would look like a blue-black metal that looks like iodine and silver at the same time. But it is not recommended to apply it to your wounds because of the powerful alpha radiation that astatine produces.
In theory, astatine could help in the treatment of cancer. In practice, it is too difficult and expensive to produce. After all, it is not only extremely radioactive, but also unstable.
1. Antimatter.
Cost: from $62.5 to $100 trillion per gram of antihydrogen
Where to find: CERN, Switzerland; DESY, Germany; Tevatron, USA.
What to do with it: Antimatter is a substance composed of antiparticles: particles similar to ordinary ones, of which everything in the Universe consists, but with opposite charges. In theory, when the Universe appeared in the Big Bang, quarks and antiquarks were formed in equal quantity, but now we can only observe galaxies and stars from normal matter, and not from any positrons. Why it is so is a mystery, called "Baryon asymmetry of the Universe" in physics.
Antimatter instantly annihilates upon contact with normal matter - the particle and the antiparticle cancel each other out, releasing huge amount of energy. Therefore, it does not occur in nature. You can only get it in the laboratory. Physicists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) managed to create 309 antiprotons that lasted for 17 minutes. It is not yet possible to store antimatter for longer, it is very difficult to produce it, which is why it is so expensive.
In theory, antimatter can be used as a source of energy and fuel for spaceships. One spoon is enough to provide several megacities with electricity for decades.
