10 most expensive substances in the world

10. Rhino horn

• Cost: from 60 to 110 dollarsVietnam seizes 125kg of smuggled rhino horns worth $ 7.5m 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.

In China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, it is consideredWhy Does a Rhino Horn Cost $ 300,000? Because Vietnam Thinks It Cures Cancer and Hangovers / The Atlanticthat the horn heals cancer, fever and other diseases, and also serves aphrodisiac. Therefore, African poachers regularly kill rhinos and trade their remains on the black market. According to rough estimatesRhino horn smuggled as jewelery / BBC NewsSince 2007, at least 7,100 of these animals have been killed in Africa, and there are about 25,000 of them left. Recently, however, the demand for the product has declined 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. They treat a fever or cancer unconfirmed superstition. So rhinos are dying completely in vain.

9. Rhodium

• Cost: about $ 363Rhodium price reached another record, exceeding $ 10,000 per ounce / MetalTorg per gram.
• Where to find: in native platinum, mainly in South Africa, as well as in Canada, Colombia and Russia.

RhodiumRhodium / Popular library of chemical elements - the most expensive and hardest of all precious 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.

Another element 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

• Cost: about $ 3,000DEA Field Division Assessments / Schaffer Library of Drug Policy per gram in its purest crystalline form.
• Where to find: it is better not to look for it.

LSD is d-lysergic acid diethylamide, a psychedelic that causes violent hallucinations in humans. His opened Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann used it immediately - first by accident, and then he got involved.

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: $ 30,000Tritium Supply Considerations / Los Alamos National Laboratory per gram.
• Where to find: Tritium Extraction Facility, Savannah River, USA; PA "Mayak", Ozersk, Russia; Ontario Hydro, Darlington Nuclear Power Plant, Canada. In nature, it occurs in the upper layers of the atmosphere when cosmic radiation particles collide with the nuclei of nitrogen atoms.

The most common 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. The creation of one kilogram of this substance costsTritium Supply Considerations / Los Alamos National Laboratory at about $ 30 million.

Tritium is a transparent, invisible gas. The bike is connected with thisDeuterium and tritium: hydrogen, but not that / Science and life, which is told by the 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 received a scolding. But, in general, tritium glows in a concentrated form, so it is added to key rings, arrows hours and medical devices.

It is also used as fuel in thermonuclear reactors and charged with hydrogen bombs. And tritium is also fed to low-power generators, for example, in medical devices.

6. Painite

• Cost: up to $ 300,000Five Gems Worth More Than Diamonds / GNJ Pawn Big per gram or up to $ 60,000 per carat.
• Where to find: natural deposits in Mogok and Kachin counties in Myanmar.

If you think that diamonds are a girl's best friend, here's a more expensive piece.Painite / California Institute of Technology any diamond. This is painite - a mineral from the class of borates (Sacha Baron Cohen it has nothing to do with it, the so-called salts of orthoboric acid), 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.

5. Zolgensma

• Cost: about $ 390,000 per gram.
• Where to find: laboratory of the Novartis company, Basel, Switzerland.

Onsemnogen abeparvovec (commercial name - "Zolgensma") is the world's first drug for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy. This is a hereditary disease Spinal muscular atrophy / NHSpreventing patients 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. Gene SMA is carried by one person in every 40-60 people on the planet.

For a long time, it was believed that SMA is, in principle, incurable, but in 2019 a cure was still found. True, it is extremely difficult to manufacture, so a 5.5 ml dose of Zolgensma costsZolgensma: the most expensive drug / Guinness Records $ 2.125 million. The drug got into the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive drug in the world.

4. Regolith

• Cost: $ 4.28 millionWhat’s a moon rock worth, anyway? / Quartz per gram.
• Where to find: The moon, as well as any planets with a solid surface and asteroids.

Regolith is simply soil, loose rocks that cover the surface of celestial bodies. The closest source of regolith to us is Moon.

Regolith consists of various minerals and igneous rocks, as well as glass that forms in places where meteorites fall when sand is exposed to high temperatures. According to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, if you put regolith in the earth's atmosphere, it will smell AND. AND. Cherkasov, V. IN. Shvarev. Moon soil I burn and spent pistons.

Everything on Earth is storedLunar Samples / LPI about 324 g of regolith collected by the Soviet automatic stations "Lunniks", 382 kg from six "Apollo" and 1,731 grams brought by the Chinese stations. Some of the Apollo astronauts' instruments, smeared with moon dust, were auctioned off. In addition, at the Sotheby's auction in 1993 they soldF.B.I. Revisits Earthly Theft of Moon Rock / The New York Times 0.6 gram of regolith delivered by the Luna-24 station for $ 442,500. An expensive but not particularly useful purchase.

3. California-252

• Cost: up to $ 27 million per gramWhat Is the Most Expensive Element? / ThoughtCo.
• Where to find: RIAR in Dimitrovgrad, Russia; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.

Californium-252 - radioactive chemical elementProduction, Distribution, and Applications of Californium-252 Neutron Sources / Oak Ridge National Lab.extremely unstable and expensive to manufacture. It is a silvery white metal.

There are also rarer and more valuable items, but this one stands out in that it at least hasCalifornium / Metalary practical application, unlike, for example, France. Californium is used in a nuclear reactor as a neutron source. It can also be used to treat some types of cancer. brain and the cervix. In addition, Californium is found in oil and coal detectors and some metal detectors.

2. Astatine

• Cost: from 1 billion dollars Directory of Cyclotrons used for Radionuclide Production in Member States per gram.
• Where to find: in different countries of the world there isMichael R. Zalutsky, Marek Pruszynski. Astatine ‑ 211: Production and Availability 36 cyclotrons capable of producing astatine. In addition, about 1 gram of astatine (approximately) is present in the earth's crust.

Astatine 1. Measurement of the first ionization potential of astatine by laser ionization spectroscopy / Nature Communications
2. Astatine / Popular library of chemical elements - the rarest element of the periodic system 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, getting enough astatine to just see it doesn't work. 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 smear wounds with it because of the powerful alpha radiation that astatine produces.

In theory, astatine could help with treatment oncological diseases. In practice, it is too difficult and expensive to produce. After all, it is not only extremely radioactive, but also unstable.

1. Antimatter

• Cost: 62.5-100 trillion dollars per gram of antihydrogenReaching for the Stars / NASA Science.
• Where to find: CERN, Switzerland; DESY, Germany; Tevatron, USA.

AntimatterQuestions & Answers / CERN Is a substance consisting 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 amounts, but now we can only observe galaxies and stars from normal matter, and not from any positrons. Why is a riddle called in physics "Baryon asymmetry of the Universe".

Antimatter instantly annihilates upon contact with normal matter - the particle and the antiparticle cancel each other out, releasing a 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 usedIs Warp Drive Real? / NASA as a source of energy and fuel for spaceships. One spoon is enough to supply several metropolitan areas electricity for decades.