What if the World turned to Gold? - The Gold Apocalypse

here in the ksk Zar Labs we only work on the most important scientific problems like what if we nuke stuff or how about we make this elephant explode or who could forget look at this thing it's really big continuing this proud tradition let's explore the scientific mystery of what would happen to you if Earth suddenly turned into gold the Midas apocalypse based on the ancient tale of King Midas who was cursed so everything he touched turned into gold before we can explore this scenario with science we'll first Define the premise midas's curse is a very

special phenomenon called Magic which allows us to modify physics so what happens when Midas touches something and it turns to [Music] gold an atom of gold has 79 protons and 118 neutrons in its nucleus the electric force of the protons on the electrons around them shapes the atom and gives gold its chemical properties like that it doesn't rust and that it's kind of shiny and bending so to make not gold into gold we have to change atoms let's say Midas touches a duck or the Light Elements like hydrogen carbon and oxygen gain electrons and protons

and neutrons to become gold not only is the duck suddenly 33 times more massive it's also much too dense the gold atoms are far closer together than they like and repel each other violently causing the Golden Duck to explode with the energy of half a ton of TNT leaving only gold dust and a very dead Midas this is clearly not a very good way for midas's power to work so what if instead midas's power uses the atoms that are already present and simply rearranges all particles in the matter he touches into gold no matter is

created or destroyed instead atoms dissolve and the protons neutrons and electrons are reassembled to make gold however gold is very dense about 20 times denser than a duck without adding any matter the gold duck would be a very awkward kind of foamy gold with lots of tiny microscopic gaps this is funky and doesn't explode which is progress now that we've established a sort of magic that works what would happen if Midas stumbles what if he touches Earth itself let let's freeze time for just a moment and rearrange all the matter in the earth just like

the duck the Earth is now solid gold but with many tiny atomic scale gaps while these gaps weren't a huge deal for the duck they're a big problem for the earth a spongy planet is not a thing that can exist as gravity compresses Earth squeezing it together to close up the gaps as a result the Earth contracts shrinking to 2/3 of its radius if you're standing on Earth's surface you'll suddenly find yourself in freefall like on a roller coaster as the ground sinks away beneath you but since the ground is falling too it doesn't move

away from you it feels like someone turned off gravity and you and everything else would begin to float but the ride doesn't last forever it takes only 10 minutes for everything to crash down and a weird 10 minutes it is indeed and then as abruptly as it started it stops the collapsing Earth has reached its desired size and gravity is suddenly turned back on for you hopefully you enjoyed your minutes of floating because the ground and you with it crash into the planet at 30,000 km an hour making your body splatter like a water balloon

as it hits in one instant basically all of humanity gets smashed into red puddles this is only the start of our problems though since Earth imploded supersonically the kinetic energy of the implosion is basically equivalent to detonating a planet made of TNT crushed together under incredible forces Earth's core reaches a million de c a temperature closer to the core of a star than anything we're used to finding on Earth as the Earth crashes into itself it generates an enormously powerful shock wave which plows upwards catapulting the atmosphere up and off the Earth's surface temperature reaches

hundreds of thousands of deg and everything on it is instantly vaporized to a fluffy plasma Cloud that starts to expand but not by much many of the atoms that may have been new get mixed into this Cloud While others boil off escaping from the atmosphere the golden plasma outshines the sun while the enormous radiation lifts tons of material off into space over the coming days the plasma Cloud cools and eventually freezes into a shiny Little Golden Ball okay maybe this type of magic doesn't work so if replacing atoms made the Earth so overdense that it

exploded and disassembling and reassembling atoms made the Earth so underdense that it imploded there must be a sweet spot where the Earth does neither what if midas's power is such that an object is suddenly replaced by an object with the same volume made from solid gold that magic is a little bit more magic and cuts a few extra corners but let's see where this leads us so Midas stumbles again even though our new pure gold Earth is not expanding or Contracting it's suddenly much more massive the density of gold is 3 and 1/2 times greater

than the earth meaning the Earth is going to get 3 and 1/2 times more massive for starters everyone now has to contend with surface gravity that is more than three times stronger so if you're not a champion weightlifter who's used to carrying around a few times your body weight on your shoulders you're probably going to be slammed To The Ground by your own weight depending on on where you were when Earth turned into gold this alone could seriously hurt or even kill you trees and artificial structures collapse under stress they were never meant to sustain

while birds and PLS and all things that were able to fly or float Splash to the ground all around you and you're not the only thing weighed down by the greater Gravity the weight of the atmosphere and also atmospheric pressure nearly quadruples which is a bad thing if you like living on its own this won't kill you scuba divers can comfortably breathe air at the pressures for a while but unfortunately squeezing the atmosphere this much raises its temperature to 150° C which is like the insides of an oven the entire Earth surface bakes roasting anything

and everything there is no Escape gold may be a metal but it's about three times weaker than steel and also very malleable which makes it very bad Mountain material the tallest mountains that can be supported are now only about 2 km high so whole ranges compress as they own weight basically crushes their base it's hard to say what happens here we're probably in for giant earthquakes and landslides as the planet is squeezed into a new shape and it's not just mountain ranges the differences between the continents and the ocean floor level out causing the ocean

basins to overflow sending massive tidal waves over the Earth's surface what remains is a planet made of gold entirely covered by an ocean 3 km deep a super hot atmosphere and a lot of dead people H okay there may be a lesson to take away here but we're not sure what it is we did all the maths though it's in our sources document if you want to take a look if you learned anything in this video let us know what it was