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Professor Martyn Poliakoff toured the Bank of England’s gold vaults, which contains $315 billion worth of bullion, and felt a little sad.
“In some ways, seeing these bars is quite disappointing because gold is an exciting element. It has interesting chemistry, and it’s just sitting here doing nothing,” said Poliakoff, who hosted a gold episode of The Periodic Table of Videos.
“It’s enormously impressive. It’s a bit sad, like a mausoleum where the dead gold is sitting, waiting for people to remember it when it could be doing exciting reactions.”
While touring the vault, Poliakoff notes that each shelf alone contains a tonne of gold worth $56 million.
“I have never seen so much of any element. Ones first reaction is that it can’t be real, because one doesn’t see such things.”
3 Comments
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so why was this chap allowed a tour when the german politicians were not? (am I correct in remembering that a month or so ago the german government decided that they would like to view german gold held by the bank of England?)
Barb
I would be quite happy with 1 bar of gold.As they say the more they get the more they want ,know as GREAD.
Chris Chambers
Dude! It is not “doing nothing”. It is retaining value, which is exactly what is needed. You would like to fritter it away on some sad little experiment, watching it go up in smoke or be destroyed in some exciting little checmical reaction. I’ll look out for it if having it all there makes you too sad.