- [Narrator] They say diamonds
are a girl's best friend,
but would they still be BFFs
when that girl finds out
what else is out there?
Many people assume gold
and precious stones
to be the most valuable
materials there are,
but in this video, I'll show you how wrong
that assumption is.
There are medicines that
cost you an arm and a leg,
rare and dangerous materials
that could destroy the earth.
And if you've ever wanted
to buy any rhino horn,
well you better get saving.
In this video, I'll show
you 10 of the most expensive
and most surprising materials on earth.
(uplifting music)
Number 10, eculizumab, $236 per gram.
Priced at $236 per gram,
or $6,690 per ounce,
eculizumab is the most
expensive legal drug
in the world and is sold
under the name Soliris.
The reason is simple enough.
It's currently the only
medication available
to treat two orphan diseases.
Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria,
and atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome.
These rare diseases cause
the body's immune system
to attack its own blood cells
and often lead to death.
Although doctors say there's
insufficient evidence
to prove that eculizumab
improves life expectancy,
the FDA has recommended it
as the first-choice therapy
for adults and children who suffer
from these terrible illnesses.
A year's treatment will
set you back around half
a million dollars a year, way
out of reach of most people.
But if it's the only option you have,
how much is too much?
Some have asked whether
pharmaceutical companies
should even be allowed to charge this much
when they know the customer
will either cough up the dough,
or give up the ghost.
Number nine, LSD, $3,000 per gram.
It's one thing spending your money
on drugs that save your life, but another
when it's mind-bending hallucinogenics
costing $85,000 an ounce.
LSD, short for lysergic acid diethylamide,
is the go-to drug of choice for hippies
and conspiracy theorists,
an incredibly potent
recreational drug that can send users
on the 12-hour journey to the
depths of their subconscious.
Creating psychedelic visual effects
and even changing your
perception of reality,
it's not a drug to be taken lightly.
It's also very difficult to manufacture,
probably because it's illegal of course,
and this explains its high cost.
A gram will set you back about $3,000.
Although this drug is
taken in such minute doses,
that a gram is probably far, far more than
anyone would ever need.
The psychedelic drug is mainly used
for fun, but its most
enthusiastic devotees
claim it has spiritual powers as a window
into the endless plane of
infinite consciousness.
There is even a cult called The League
for Spiritual Discovery that considers LSD
a holy sacrament.
Maybe they have a point, but
then again, maybe they've just
been indulging in too many
of their brain-melting communion wafers.
Number eight, plutonium, $4,000 per gram.
Possessing the highest atomic number
of all natural elements, plutonium,
costing $113,000 per ounce has nothing
to do with the planet
Pluto, except its name
is derived from it.
In fact, plutonium is a
highly-radioactive metal
with a silvery-gray
appearance, and its main use
is in the production of nuclear weapons
and energy, plutonium
generates the power required
to heat homes, propel giant submarines,
or incinerate whole cities.
It's a rare earth element found only
in traces within uranium deposits,
and the process to extract
it is an arduous one.
It's obtained by burning uranium,
the very same method
used in nuclear reactors.
Even if you could afford to buy some,
you would very quickly get a knock
on the door from the FBI,
because this is a tightly-controlled
substance, and with good reason.
Inhaling and ingesting
plutonium dust is deadly,
and even being near it can cause your DNA
to mutate, causing cancers.
Number seven, taaffeite, $20,000 per gram.
Extremely beautiful to look at,
and a hundred times rarer than diamonds,
taaffeite is a precious stone
worth $567,000 per ounce,
with colors that range
from lilac to violet,
brown to red, blue to
green, and translucent.
This rare gemstone was originally believed
to be a spinel, another precious stone
with a very similar structure.
The mineral has been found
in deep rock formations
in Sri Lanka, and contains beryllium,
magnesium, and aluminum as its
main structural components.
Even though taaffeite
is strikingly unique,
it's not a popular choice for jewelry,
but for a collector, it is
one of the most sought-after,
and therefore one of the most expensive.
Number six, benitoite, $25,000 per gram.
Often called the blue diamond, benitoite
is an extremely rare blue
barium titanium silicate mineral
priced at $709,000 per ounce.
Its color ranges from nearly
transparent to violet.
And under the short waves
of ultraviolet light,
benitoite fluoresces a bright blue color.
The metamorphic rock was
discovered in 1907 near
the headwaters of the San Benito River,
the only place this gem can be found.
Sadly, the benitoite
mine is no longer active,
which has added to the value
of this prized blue rock.
Due to its cerulean shades,
benitoite was initially
thought to be a form of sapphire.
And today, it's regarded
as the official gemstone of California.
Number five, tritium, $30,000 per gram.
This radioactive gas puts
the H in the hydrogen bomb.
You may have learned about tritium,
an isotope of hydrogen in
middle school chemistry,
but you might not have known
it's worth a whopping $850,000 per ounce.
Tritium occurs naturally
only in trace amounts.
It's formed in the earth's atmosphere
through interaction with cosmic rays,
and a tiny amount can be
found in water bodies.
If you were to produce it yourself,
it would cost you about
15 million a pound.
Tritium is a radioactive material,
but is strangely safe compared
to other radioactive substances,
most of which can kill,
incinerate, or poison.
This is pretty lucky because if tritium
was dangerous, we'd be in serious trouble.
The valuable gas is dissolved in rain
and present in the water we drink.
Currently, tritium is
mainly used in research
as a component in nuclear weapons,
neutron generators and fusion reactors.
And of course, it's present
in those fluorescent lights
that glow for up to 25 years.
Number four, diamond, $55,000 per gram.
Why are you surprised the diamond isn't
on the top of the list?
Well, at one and a half
million dollars per ounce,
it's the fourth most expensive
substance in the world.
But interestingly, diamonds
aren't even particularly rare,
so why are they so valuable?
Well, the answer is good PR,
thanks to the intense
cultural importance assigned
to them by movies,
advertisements and songs,
like Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend,
the shiny stones have
become must-have items.
Billions of years old and formed hundreds
of miles underground in earth's crust,
a diamond is almost 100% carbon.
It's the extreme pressure
that turns common
old carbon into a beautiful,
shiny crystalline structure.
It's name is derived from
the Greek word adamas, meaning invincible,
and the ancient Greeks considered diamonds
to be tears cried by the Gods.
If you ever wondered how
diamonds and romance relate,
it could be due to an ancient Roman belief
that cupid's arrows had
diamonds on their edges.
It was also more recently discovered that
about one and a half million
diamond nano-particles
are found in the average candle's flame.
So that's why candlelight
dinners are romantic.
If we ever ran out of diamonds on earth,
the universe has us covered.
Approximately 50 light years away,
there's a 10 billion trillion
trillion caret diamond star
in the sky called Lucy, named after
the famous Beatles song, Lucy
in the Sky with Diamonds.
Number three, californium,
25 million a gram.
Weighing in at over 700 million an ounce,
Californium isn't only crazy-expensive,
it's also frighteningly
radioactive and volatile.
Its instability makes it
one of the most dangerous
chemical elements in existence.
Sitting beyond uranium
on the periodic table,
it's an actinide element
that was first synthesized
in 1950 at the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
by directing a high-speed stream
of alpha particles at curium.
After einsteinium, it is the heaviest
of all the elements that
have been manufactured
in amounts large enough
to see with the naked eye.
But if it's so dangerous,
why are people making it?
Well, when other radiation therapies
have been deemed ineffective, californium
is used in the treatment of
cervical and brain cancers.
Destroying cancer cells with intense doses
of radiation, and a last-ditch
attempt to save lives.
Other than that, very little is known
about its properties.
It doesn't occur in nature,
and its huge price tag
makes it difficult to study regularly.
Number two, buckminsterfullerene,
150 million per gram.
Buckminsterfullerene is a molecule with
a hollow cage-like structure
resembling a soccer ball,
as well as being a very high-scoring
word to get in Scrabble.
Buckminsterfullerene
would cost over $4 billion
per ounce, and is properly
known as the magic molecule.
Its discoverers, Herald
Kroto, Robert Curl,
James R. Heath, and Richard Smalley,
who were awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
in 1996 for finding it.
Composed entirely of carbon, it is a form
of fullerene found in soot
and has been identified
far away in deep space.
It is composed of 20
hexagons and 12 pentagons,
and is affectionately
nicknamed the bucky ball.
The molecule was named
after a renowned architect
Buckminster Fuller, who has designed
many geodesic dome structures
that resemble the molecule structure,
and there's a reason buckminsterfullerene
is called the magic molecule, too.
The interior of bucky balls is so large
that they can easily entrap any element
from the periodic table
without reacting to them.
Thanks to this unique
property, bucky balls
can be used electrically for insulation,
conduction, semi-conduction,
and even super-conduction.
They have a plethora
of other applications,
such as in lubricants,
catalysts, drug delivery systems,
photovoltaics, and antioxidants.
It's the usefulness of
this custom-built molecule
that gives it its gigantic value.
Before I reveal the most
expensive material on earth,
I want to mention a few more
super-expensive materials
that are deserving of
a space on this list.
Rhinoceros's horn.
Poor old rhinos are facing
extinction due to poaching,
a crime motivated by the
high value of their horns.
Even though it has no
medicinal properties,
some people still believe it can be used
to treat all kinds of diseases.
At more than $60,000 a kilo, rhino horn
is more valuable than gold or cocaine.
Jade, jade is a highly-prized,
smooth green stone.
It has been sought after
in Asia for thousands
of years, but was deemed
almost worthless in the Western
world, until the 1970s, when jade gained
commercial popularity
as the most respected
gemstone in Chinese and Asian art.
Today, jade is mined all over the world,
and this gigantic lump was
recently mined in Canada.
A piece this size is
worth around $15 million.
At today's prices, this
makes jade much more valuable
than gold at around $3,000 per ounce.
Ambergris, worth almost $10,000 per pound,
ambergris is literally vomit,
whale vomit, to be precise.
This gray waxy substance is found
in the digestive system
of male sperm whales
after they dine on squids
and other sea creates.
Fresh ambergris gives
off a strong fishy odor
and is found in high-end
perfumes like Gucci and Chanel.
As a result of its
properties as a fixative,
people who are brave enough to eat
it say it has a sweet earthly taste.
I'll take their word for it.
And now, back to our list.
It's time to reveal the number-one most
expensive material on earth.
Number one, antimatter, 62
and a half trillion per gram.
Antimatter, the stuff
of fiction and reality.
Scientists claim antimatter
to be the most expensive
material to exist on earth.
And priced at 177 trillion per ounce,
I won't argue with that.
Antimatter contains the
opposite corresponding
particles of ordinary matter,
and it exists everywhere.
Antimatter particles
have only very recently
been combined, and in tiny amounts
by the world's leading physicists.
Theoretically, antimatter could be used
as a fuel for the
spacecrafts of the future.
According to physicists,
antimatter and matter
can't exist together, and it's a mystery
why matter got the edge over antimatter
when the big bang happened.
Today, humans have only managed
to create a tiny fragment of antimatter,
and maybe that's not a bad thing.
Antimatter has the potential to release
a ridiculously huge amount of energy,
approximately 25 million billion
kilowatt hours of energy.
A gram of it could cause an explosion
the size of a nuclear bomb.
So the problem is not
only its gigantic cost,
but also its safe production and storage.
But with climate change
making fossil fuels redundant,
maybe it's an investment we have to make.
If the prize is an eternity of affordable,
clean, and powerful energy,
antimatter might one day
be worth the price tag.
So, can you afford any of
the materials on this list?
Do any of them sound
like a good value to you?
Let me know in the comments
and thanks for watching.
(casual offbeat music)
