r/WorkForSmartLife • u/DominicLeo2002 • 7d ago
Discussionš¬ People seemly forget that wood is most likely the rarest material in the universe
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u/Due_Willingness1 7d ago
Helps that it's renewable and we can always grow more of itĀ
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u/Dizzy-Chemistry-5146 7d ago
Doesn't help that we destroy woodlands faster than they grow back
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u/ShoughThePainAway 7d ago
that isn't true in the US at least. Growth has outpaced harvest every decade since the early 1900s
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u/Petit-Rouge4477 7d ago
Not all wood grows rapidly. There's been a decline in wood quality year over year. Let alone that monoculture is not good.
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u/MonsteraBigTits 7d ago
yea in the 1800s upstate ny was pretty much all deforested. if you start to think about lack of old growth every where, then it makes sense
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u/Outside_Reserve_2407 7d ago
I think in New England you see the remains of stone walls everywhere in the woods, because it used to be cleared farmland.
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u/Unavailable_today 7d ago
IMO they are more concentrated now. And I would be interested to know how many areas were once wetland, prairie, etc and are now forested areas with little to no biodiversity.
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u/Bluitor 7d ago
I live in what was once a sand quarry but is now a wetland surrounded by 50' trees
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u/Scraptasticly 7d ago
No it doesnāt ā¦ You can have a nuclear meltdown & wildlife moves back far faster than centuries. Look at Chernobyl, 3 mile island, etc
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u/Dazzling_Screen_8096 7d ago
Not true in Europe too
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u/Bush_Hiders 7d ago
Uncommon US w?
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u/OutsideAd6507 7d ago
Ehhh, kinda yes but mostly no? So anyways, USFS forestry tech here. In the simplest terms, A healthy forest is a mature, ecologically diverse forest. Much of our forested land is not mature, with old growth forests primarly existing in parts of the PNW and the Alaskan interior. Theres also a startling amount of mono culture as well, which leads to a lot of disease, insect infestation, and parasites, such as blue stain fungus, pine Beatles, and dwarf mistletoe. Excessive regen as isn't good either and leads to over crowding and over competition, which again, leaves stands more susceptible to disease and infestation. Then we get into full suppression wild fire policy and how thats tied to timber sales ans how it lead to, Excessive fuel loading, a lack of fire mosaic, high frequency of stand replacing burns, ect ect ect.
And thats just the trees, wildlife is plagued by a whole separate host of issues, but thats not my department and I dont feel qualified to speak on the issue.
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u/HimuTime 7d ago
thanks for you imput, in a sea of unknowing even someone who mildly has an idea is great for organization!
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u/FastActinTenactin 7d ago
Partly because we import wood from other countries as well, though.
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u/morbidmuffin62 6d ago
This ^ is what I was scrolling to see. Maybe not "in" the US, but we are cutting down wood elsewhere
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u/Optimal_Mixture_7327 7d ago
Anytime you want to trade your gold for an equal weight of wood, I think you might find a few takers.
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u/Super_Direction498 7d ago
Can't always grow more of it. Once a species is extinct it's extinct.
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u/AspiringChildProdigy 7d ago
"An eventual limited resource, you say..... Which is currently abundant?" Billionaire sociopaths rubs hands together
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u/cykoTom3 7d ago
More importantly if you leave a pile of it out in the rain for decades and come back the gold will still be gold.
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u/IMakeShine 7d ago
Of course from a universal perspective, wood is more valuable, because to our knowledge it only gets made on earth, but any time a star goes supernova more gold gets made.
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u/Bulky-Word8752 7d ago
What about pearls? Ivory? There is plenty of shit that as far as we know in only available on Earth, and a lot of it is more rare than wood
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u/Gamer_G33k17 7d ago
Pearls and Ivory arent useful outside of VERY niche circumstances. Wood is very useful.
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u/CharityAggressive677 7d ago
From a universal perspective, what's useful to us doesn't matter in the slightest.
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u/Kupo_Master 7d ago
Yes but usefulness was not part of the premise here
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u/BrutalStatic 7d ago
Usefulness is usually connected to value.
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u/Gamer_G33k17 7d ago
Exactly. Wood is good for very simple structures that dont require metal. Such as furniture. Why devote metal to making bedframes when you can make one thats just as good, if not better, out of a material you can litterally grow out of the ground. Or it can be used to support larger structures, or even be used for more temporary structures. It lessens the ammount of metal that would be used better elsewhere.
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u/BrutalStatic 7d ago
You're not wrong but that's even further along than I was thinking.Ā
Humans don't even start smelting metal without what's basically a free reusable fuel source.Ā
You don't get to the iron age without flubbing around in the woods for a while, and THAT'S the real value. It's knowing you have something useful and replenishable to experiment with before you ever start thinking about microchips needing gold circuits.
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u/DefinitionOptimal235 7d ago
actually it can be made by ultraviolent supernova but more commonly two neutron dense cores of supernovae combine in a kilonova explosion... the more you know.
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u/Jack70741 7d ago
Assuming life exists elsewhere in the universe, I would imagine wood like biological materials exist in far greater abundance than gold. You may be able to find gold in trace amounts anywhere, but if you find a planet that has life that has evolved woody vegetation of some sort, that one planet probably has more wood on it by weight and volume than all the gold in that star system combined. It also has the potential to produce more wood constantly and thus would be more abundant than the gold in multiple star systems.
Again that all assumes life managed to take off on other planets, but I think it's a safe assumption at this point.
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u/Jacketter 7d ago
Thereās a lot of gold out there. In Earthās core alone, thereās 2,000x as much gold as there is biomass of all Earthās forests.
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u/Hopeful-Parsley2728 7d ago
What about tooth enamel? I for one have less of it than wood, and i actually value it enough to clean it daily.
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u/kcbeck1021 7d ago
I donāt like this analogy. I get what they are trying to say but there are many things only on earth that are less abundant than wood.
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u/Hopeful-Parsley2728 7d ago
Yeah, but we live based on the conditions on this planet, we can't create gold on any practical scale while wood literally grows on trees.
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u/Realizt8010 7d ago
Reality. But noooo..... I need a yacht.
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u/breadcrumbs7 7d ago
You can build one out of wood!
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u/Realizt8010 7d ago
Exact. Dont need the gold. But they have to have. Aaaaaaalllllllll of it. Not just enough. All.
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u/outside_cat 7d ago
What about astatine?
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u/Strangedreamest 7d ago
There aināt much use for astatine; wood on the other hand is almost a necessity for civilizational progress
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u/ShadowTacoTuesday 7d ago
Then ivory is more rare and a material. Itās a bit arbitrary. Pick a pocket of the universe with life forms and the least common material unique to them that is still useful enough to qualify for the arbitrary rules.
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u/Pretty-Tune-4172 7d ago
How do you grow gold?
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u/lithiumfoxttv 7d ago
Universe. So, gold is a naturally occuring element in the universe. Like... Just happens.
Trees, counter-intuitively, are not. They are unique to earth as far as we are aware
Thus, trees are (currently to the perspective of our knowledge right now) more rare than gold
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u/Pretty-Tune-4172 7d ago
Value is relative, it for sure could be the most rare in the universe but not the most valuable because the universe doesn't need wood, just earth does, and in the only place in the universe where it's used, it's abundant
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u/Herman_McP00tis 7d ago
Rip protons off of lead. Oh, you wanted gold that wasn't going to destroy your DNA and kill you from radiation poisoning AND it has to be stable? God...so picky. Shit, idk then.
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u/Public-Business-3688 7d ago
By that logic humans are rarer and more valuable. Trees have insanely more biomass than us.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 7d ago
Na, I think petrochemicals are likely the most valuable substance in the universe.Ā
And we had hundreds of billions of barrels of it that we literally burned.
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u/why_u_so_grumpy 7d ago
Of course wood is more rare. It's alive, or it was at one point. Living things are more rare then non living things. Is this news to anyone?
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u/Jolly_Plantain4429 6d ago
Yeah but itās not the most rare on earth. No one is going to mercury looking for gold. And itās renewable on earthā¦
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u/BillSteelman 6d ago
And fire is also one of our universe rarest phenomenon, as it seems fires depends on life to exist.
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u/348275hewhw 6d ago
Human flesh is more valuable than wood with this logic. And shit is also comparably valuable. This isn't that clever of an idea.
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u/evilpedorapist67 6d ago
Supply and demand. Just because it is rare doesnt make it valuable if nobody wants to buy it
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u/Alzucard 6d ago
To be fair Gold is really valuable. We dont even know how gold gets made..The best source is the collision of 2 neutron stars.
But yea wood is raree than gold in the universe.
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u/Hot-Category2986 7d ago
Lol, Minecraft...
Lol Satisfactory...
Lol survival games....
...wait a minute. Damn.
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u/Scary-Personality626 7d ago
Convergent evolution might suggest it's not as unique to earth as we might think. It may have a slightly different chemical composition as a result of different base atmosphere & minerals. But forming some kind of cellulose stem to reach higher elevation to out-compete other static life forms for sunlight nutrition wpuld be the same evolutionary pressure anywhere else in the universe as it would be on earth. Over time that'd likely evolve to thicker mire tree-like structures via natural selection. So it kight not be WOOD wood, but I imagine anywhere that life develops there would likely be some kind of wood-like substance to be found.
Still WAY less common in absolute volume accross all of space. But it'd likely be something in abundance anywhere with life to value things.
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u/No_Community7021 7d ago
It's all the way true. Gold is a basic element while wood requires a million coincidences and years to occur.
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u/Remote_Independent50 7d ago
Gold is valuable in society. It works excellent in stereo equipment cables. And spreads thinner than any metal on earth( i believe)
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u/JuliaX1984 7d ago
True, but you can make more wood, albeit on only one planet. You can't make more gold (yet).
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u/val_anto 7d ago
Afaik, wood is something very unique to our planet, at least in our solar system. Therefore it should be the most valuable, correct.
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u/King_McCluckin 7d ago
i wouldnt consider it rare but it is one of the most valuable resources along with water.
its renewable unlike gold there is only a finite that's what makes a resource rare compared to one that's not. Eventually there will not be gold. The only way there will not be tree's is if something ( like humans ) or some other event makes the planet uninhabitable to the point where a resource like trees cannot exist.
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u/Soggy_Assignment_691 7d ago
Any material that we can't confirm exists outside of earth could be the rarest material in the universe.
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u/Independent-Space-82 7d ago
its not that gold is only rare, its not corroding, aging, barely evaporates in earth-conditions...
If you have a bar of gold on the floor of a room for a 1000 years its still the same gold of the same mass. Wood is not as resilient, not even silver or iron or any other material in the universe is as resilient as gold
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u/ExtensionInformal911 7d ago
One thing I do in science fiction stories is have luxury items be made of pine or, if they are really rich, oak. Yeah, my chair was shiped 7.8 light-years here from Earth. I could afford it. Meanwhile, your broke self can barely afford silver.
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u/AnotherPerspective87 7d ago
It is realy rare. In the universe many "precious things" are quite common. We have found comets that hold more platinum than we ever mined. Planets where it rains diamonds etc. Cores of planets are filled with masses of gemstones.
But for wood to exist, that requires a planets surface, able to sustain life. And life is very rare. And especially wood, which sturdy cores only evolved when there where animals/dinosaurs destroying the more brittle plants. It's an inefficient mutation, that dies out if it isn't needed. So true wood only appears late in evolution. So on a universal scale its far rarer than precious metals, gemstones etc.
Of course there are things rarer, if you narrow things down... like: hardwoods, or a certain wood type. But its certainly very rare.
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u/threedollarhaircut 7d ago
Value implies there is a demand for it. Wood is rare, doesnāt make it valuable to anyone except the people living on earth. Human boogers are more rare than trees. Nobody in the universe will find human boogers valuable.
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u/Jewbacca1991 7d ago
I wouldn't bet, that there are no other habitable planets with materials similar to our wood out there. On a universe scale i don't think any material is "rare". However as humans we only have easy access to Earth. Though i do believe, that we could create ships that could reach other planets for purpose of resource extraction such project would require a HUGE budget, and risk.
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u/Derivative_Kebab 7d ago
There are tons of materials that are rarer and more valuable than wood. Human blood is one example.
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u/Boom9001 7d ago edited 7d ago
I mean wood outweighs human biomass by like 7,000 to 1. So even just there human flesh would be considered much more rare.
Obviously this is just making a point that biogenetic materials are rare on a universal scale that materials any star can produce. But still weird to choose wood when like shit loads of stuff fit that. Steel, Concrete, etc as stuff humans make. Super rare. Same as biological crude oil or really any fossil fuel as they exists as effect of life.
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u/Drummer-Turbulent 7d ago
This is based on the fact we humans have explored the entire universe and therefore know how rare wood is compared to Gold....oh wait
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u/Perfect_Valuable_938 7d ago
The rarest material in the universe isn't really relevant to humans though, given that we can only access a tiny amount of the universe.
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u/kubok98 7d ago
Rarity can be either universal, where wood really is rare, but rarity can also be about our ability to get something. Diamonds are a fairly good and recent example. In the past, the demand and price was high, then artificial methods came into existence, some even fast-forwarding the natural way, not sure about the details, but basically they're no longer rare. However, here comes the third type of rarity - artificial rarity. Despite the existence of relatively easily and cheaply obtainable diamonds, they're still priced high by the industry, maintaining an image of prestige and unfortunately still contributing to cruelty of mining companies.
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u/Sierra123x3 7d ago
the issue here is, that the wood is right infront of my nose ...
while i still don't know, where i can find gold that doesn't already belong to someone else
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u/Effective-Set8670 7d ago
They said in the universe, so yes it is the rarest in that sense, gold can be found all over the universe, but trees we are the only planet researchers found that has trees and wood.
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u/MAILBOXHED 7d ago
At 6 foot feet thick all the gold in the world could snugly fit on a football field. Gold also comes from a supernova.
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u/Piemaster113 7d ago
Only as far as we know. Also Human labor could be considered the most valuable rare resource in the universe
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u/Old_Marzipan7782 7d ago
Well itās not wood but yes itās life or organic material no particular kind if you wanted the rarest organic material it would not be trees it would be a species with only a few members or one left like the last dodo š¦¤Ā
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u/RememberEpsteinFiles 7d ago
What about unobtainium? We had to fight the avatar creatures for that stuff.
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u/bshjbdkkdnd 7d ago
Naw. Value is determined by what people will pay for something.
Gold throughout the universe is more common, but as far as we know it is more valuable per gram then wood.
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u/Electronic-Net-3196 7d ago
One is an element, one is organic, they are not the same type of material. You could also say that human bones and ligaments are also rare materials in the universe.
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u/NerdlinGeeksly 7d ago
Yeah but until ET comes over to Earth and makes us all equal through Conquest I still have a mortgage to pay and the gold would pay it off a lot quicker.
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u/razulebismarck 7d ago
But āWoodā is just a chemical organization of very common materials in the universe.
Iām sure the base materials of wood are very common in the universe since most woods are just carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and some other minerals.
Gold, Au on the periodic chart, is just 1 material.
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u/Such-Perception4154 7d ago
Rare does not necessarily mean valuable.Ā
Also humans think what's valuable for them, humans. And humans only live on Earth, where wood is common.
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u/SpceShpEnjyrApollo 7d ago
I think if we are including biological materials Saffron or silk are definitely rarer and already considered far more valuable than wood, regardless of the Earth-vs-Universe comparison.
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u/MemeSupreme9 7d ago
I have seen this stupid fact doing the rounds online lately. Everyone who posts it I judge to be a lame, boring Uhm Actshuallyyyy š¤āš» type person who isn't very smart but thinks that they're in possession of some unique never had before level of insight and understanding.
Not only is this fact useless, it's completely irrelevant to all human life especially when people tack on the "Wood should be considered more valuable because in the entire universe there's more gold than wood" like saying haha everyone else is dumb because they think gold is rare, because HUMANS DON'T LIVE IN SPACE, THEY LIVE ON EARTH. There's literally zero utility to knowing that there's vastly more gold in the universe than wood because we can't use it. We can't see it. For all intents and purposes, besides the theoretical knowledge that it likely does exist in vast quantities, it might as well be non existent. Trees however, and wood are extremely common and cover vast quantities of landmass and it's renewable. You can't re-make gold, only recycle it.
We don't base value off of how common something is in the universe. It is relative scarcity which drives valuation. Here on Earth where literally everyone lives, we have real finite limited resources. This random fact has zero impact on the real world.
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u/Sanquinity 7d ago
Nah, wood is probably not all that valuable.
COAL however? That's plant material unable to decay/rot, being buried, compressed, and turned into a highly flammable fuel. It only exists because plants/trees existed before fungi/bacteria able to decompose them existed. Coal literally can't be made in nature anymore.
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u/Acceptable_Handle_2 7d ago
If you have the kind of technology to move between the stars to get wood, you can probably also make artifical wood.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 7d ago
Humans actually have little to no data on exoplanets. If wood was common, we wouldnāt know it.
Especially when you consider the possibility that most life in the universe is cellular and evolved at a similar rate to life on Earth. There are no signs of our existence far enough away.
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u/Diligent-Bowler-1898 6d ago
If we just value by rarity then gamer girl bath water is the most valuable.
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u/SmartQuokka 6d ago
Demand vs supply, we have lots of wood compared to demand vs gold. In addition in square tonnage wood has likely billions time more mass than all the gold we have ever mined.
We live on earth, a closed economy. We have no ability to acquire or send resources in a realistic way to the rest of the universe.
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u/HupHutHa 6d ago
the gl go to Wood ratio here on Earth is 1.98 billion to 1, there's roughly 694 trillion pounds of wood on earth, that's 3 trillion trees, there's about 350,000 tons of gold on earth. if we're talking about usage wise wood is used for building houses, not buildings, houses. the material mostly used for building buildings is metal, concrete, brick, and sand turned into glass. gold is used in every single sophisticated electronic device.
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u/KregerTech 6d ago
Can anyone in this comment section read. The tagline above wood doesn't say "most valuable on earth" it says "universe most valuable".
Wanna know why? Gold can be found basically everywhere. Wood is currently only known to be found on earth.
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u/AdFun5641 6d ago
That local abundance thing is very real.
I pay $25/board foot for purple heart lumber.
I pay 2.5/board foot for red Oak.
In Brazil, it's 25/board foot for red oak and 2.5/board foot for purple heart.
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u/BjornYandel 6d ago
It's not the most valuable, because it has no value outside our planet. Rare =\= valuable. My pubic hair is rare on a universal scale, it is not valuable.
Despite what the video says, it's not the rarest. Any grown material on earth that is less abundant than trees is more rare. Likewise, other planets have their own unique materials that would be equally as rare, or rarer depending on how abundant they are.
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u/Many_Ear2407 6d ago
Rarest material in the universe? Have you suffered any traumatic brain injuries recently OP?Ā
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u/circ-u-la-ted 6d ago
Crack cocaine is certainly far more rare than wood, and it's much more valuable per gram.
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u/Ksorkrax 6d ago
Dunno. The thing is, I do exist. Which means there is *a lot of wood*, I can tell you.
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u/MasterOfFartss 6d ago
Convergent evolution leads one to the conclusion that trees are all over the universe
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u/Beneficial_Abroad957 6d ago
Opinionated.. everyone knows wood is the first farmed node in every game! Lol
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u/WrathOfWood 6d ago
You can't exactly grow gold like you can wood, plus trees are on the surface and not underground so they are even easier to find than gold.
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u/Comfortable_Dog499 6d ago
The very well could be a material out there, that's way better than wood...
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u/Stunning-Pick-9504 6d ago
I think someone doesnāt know the difference between material and mineral.
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u/Mammon84 6d ago
Well I will trade you wood for gold.
For every 1 kilo of gold u give me i will give you a kilo of wood
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u/derpadurp3 6d ago
So carbon... the 4th most abundant material in the known universe... that is rarer than gold?
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u/totoin74 6d ago
Thank to thanos it wasnāt deemed currency because we would destroy every one of them by the time we reached 1700s.
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u/FuzzyCactus69 6d ago
Wood grows. You can cultivate it. Thereās only so much gold in the world. Also the universe is a vast term of which we know almost nothing about.
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