Genetic research: Researchers place gold DNA strands to study the hybrid genetic material of cells.

If we make all the gold ever produced into a thin wire of 5 microns (millionths of a metre) diameter - the finest one can draw a gold wire, then all the gold would stretch around the circumference of the world an astounding 7.2 million times approximately!

Only one out of a billion atoms of rock in Earth's crust are gold. (If expressed by weight abundance, it is five parts per billion, but by numbers of atoms it is about one atom of gold per billion.)

You've heard of white gold and yellow gold, but gold can come in many other colors depending on what other elements it is in contact with. There is green, black and even purple gold

Gold foil was wrapped around the Apollo moon landing modules to protect astronauts from radiation. A thin film of gold on the visor of astronauts is still used to protect the eyes from glare.

In cars, airbags depend on gold-coated contacts and electronic sensors for reliability, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the past 15 years.

Over 20% of the decorative gold used throughout the world is in the thread of Indian saris.

In every cubic mile of sea water there is 25 tons of gold! That's a total of about 10 billion tons of gold in the oceans; however, there's no known way to economically recover it.

Medical Marvel: With gold-plated interiors, lasers give off a more focused beam, helping save the lives of heart patients suffering from once-inoperable heart conditions and tumors.

A one-ounce gold nugget is more rare to find than a five- carat diamond.

Gold is extremely malleable and ductile. A one-ounce piece can be beaten into a translucent sheet five-millionths of an ounce thick or drawn out into 50 miles of wire five micrometers thick-one-then the diameter of a human hair.

The largest gold nugget believed to exist today is the "Hand of Faith," a 60- pound specimen discovered in Victoria, Australia, in October, 1980. It is currently on display at the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas.

Around half of all gold mined today is made into jewellery, which remains the single largest use for gold.

In the 7th c B.C. dentists used gold wire to attach fake teeth and gold fillings were recommended for cavities as far back as the 16th century

Gold is called a "noble" metal (an alchemistic term) because it does not oxidize under ordinary conditions, meaning that it will never rust and never tarnish.

The word gold appears to be derived from the Indo-European root 'yellow', reflecting one of the most obvious properties of gold. This is reflected in the similarities of the word gold in various languages: Gold (English), Gold(German), Guld (Danish), Gulden (Dutch), Goud (Afrikaans), Gull (Norwegian) and Kulta (Finnish).

Computers, the heart of the digital revolution, depend on gold circuitry.

Gold is chemically liquified and injected into the muscles of thousands of rheumatoid arthritis victims in the U.S., and it is said that the treatment is successful in seven out of ten cases.

In the air, commercial airplanes rely on gold-bonded compressor vanes to cool their turbines from exhaust that can reach up to 1150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Gold is a rare metallic element with a melting point of 1064 degrees centigrade and a boiling point of 2808 degrees centigrade. Its chemical symbol, Au, is short for the Latin word for gold, 'Aurum', which literally means 'Glowing Dawn'. It has several properties that have made it very useful to mankind over the years, notably its excellent conductive properties and its inability to react with water or oxygen

In the Hubble telescope, all parts of its electronic camera are coated with gold to insulate against heat damaging its celestial snapshots.

Windows in some apartment buildings are coated with gold to help reflect sun in the summer and retain heat in the winter.

At work, gold-coated infrared equipment is used to detect a dangerous build-up of carbon monoxide and other air pollutants.

Gold is virtually indestructible and has been highly valued throughout history, so humans have always recycled it. Upwards of 85% of all the gold found is still being used today.

It has been estimated that, worldwide, the total amount of gold ever mined is 152,000 metric tons, only enough to fill 60 tractor trailers. In comparison, each year 907 million metric tons of iron are produced worldwide. This is equivalent to 6,000 times the total gold produced throughout history.

Gold in Outer space: In 1999 the NEAR spacecraft showed that a single asteroid, Eros, contains more gold than has ever been mined on Earth.

Gold was probably the first metal worked by prehistoric man. Decorative gold objects found in Bulgaria date back to 4,000 B.C. so the Gold Age actually overlaps with the Stone Age.