eli5: how is there only enough gold in the world to fit a cube under the Eiffel tower, when countries have gold reserves, gold jewellery is common and gold is frequently used in industrial appliances?
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One other piece not covered in other answers is that big cubes are a *lot* bigger than you think.
Start up Minecraft and lay out 100 blocks. That’s not so hard. It’ll take you, I dunno, a minute or two? And while it’s not *short*, 100 blocks isn’t some ridiculous distance, either.
Now, lay a 100 x 100 square of blocks. That’s a hassle and a half. It’s a minute for each row, so 100 rows is 100 minutes is about an hour and a half. That’s a pretty big undertaking, even if you’ve got all the blocks.
Now, lay out a 100 x 100 x 100 *cube* of blocks. Uh-oh. That’s 100 times your hour and a half, or 150 hours. That’s more time than I’ve invested, total, on just about all the games on my Steam list. It’s a *million* blocks.
A 1000 block line would take you ten minutes or so. A 1000x1000x1000 cube would take you 51 **years** of working on it eight hours a day.
If you make a cube twice as big on each side, you have 8x the volume. Ten times longer, you have *1000* times the volume.
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