What's worth more, a pound of grass or a pound of peacock feathers? Or a pound of human blood?

The Evil Mad Scientist Labs folks have conducted exhaustive investigation into the value of objects relative to their weight, starting with coins and bills and working through commodities like flour, and thence to exotics like human blood and antimatter. This is extremely useful information if you're ever trying to get a lot of valuta through a narrow aperture.

People have been saying that the new industrial grade swimsuits like the LZR Racer are worth their weight in gold. As you can see, this is clearly inaccurate. But such a suit is worth its weight in marijuana or industrial diamonds.
At the high end of this graph is gold (the only thing worth exactly its own weight in gold!), right next to the cost of launching a pound of stuff to low earth orbit on the ISS. Putting that into perspective here: You might as well build your whole spaceship out of $20 bills-- it still would cost less than putting it up there. It could almost be made of solid gold for that price.

The monetary density of things

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Kieran O’Neill

#28: Lol again. Well, let’s see. They talk about a container weighing 100kg holding 1ng of antiprotons in a space 1mm across. Let’s assume it’s cubic (maybe wrong, but we’re estimating here). Then, a teaspoon, being 5cm^3, would be 5000 times that volume. (Figures taken from the Nasa article in my above post.)

So, assuming (big one, this) the weight of the container scales with the amount of antiprotons contained, the “teaspoon” would weigh 500 000 kg or 500 tons. It would certainly be the world’s largest and most expensive teaspoon!

So, they say they have a plant that will soon be producing 15 ng per year. Since a teaspoon holds 5000ng (see above), at that rate it would take around 333 years or so to create.

Needless to say, we don’t need to worry about this stuff being used in weapons, both in terms of cost and rate of production.

Not yet, anyway…
Anonymous

@ all of you. WOW that’s amazig. antimatter is so cool, I’m gonna go into my altenate universe now and get a few barrels full, sell em for all the earths money (all countrys) buy a space mansion, and a space city. Take my friends up there, after I’m on some awesome planet, I press a button that smacks the person holding a bowl of antimatter, it drops, earth explodes/implodes, I create an awesome new population as the king of everything! XDXDXD MWUAAHAHAHAHA =3
Takuan

how much for justice?
musicalwoods

@Glossolalia Black

I think the question is:
Do we have that much antimatter?

And the answer is no.
squirrelgirl

where on earth are they getting the figure that a Maine Coon Cat costs $1000?!?! As a Mainer I can tell you, this is flat out ridiculous. You can find Maine Coons in every animal shelter in the state, and almost every stray that you find is at least part Maine Coon. They are what I consider to be “normal cats”.

Also that seems like such a random thing to put on there. Why not use a purebred poodle or something more people can recognize?
Glossolalia Black

Where do you go about finding a pound of antimatter, anyway?
Ugly Canuck

BRLittle: Give Damien Hirst a call re: full-size solid gold decorative spaceship. You never know…
Jeff

#14, you might try looking in any Federation star ship warp core. Geez!
Ugly Canuck

Sabik: You are right. It is so.
Anonymous

Having worked in a molecular biology lab many years ago, I believe some of the most expensive thing by weight were the chemical tools used in the lab. My memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I seem to remember that restriction enzymes were typically sold in 500 or 1000 uL containers (that .5 or 1 mL), which would go up to around $500 each. So a 1 mL container at that price would translate into $226,500/lb. Looking at the link, diamonds are still more expensive.
Jerril

@13, Squirrel Girl:

Click on the link. Coonyham Pet Kittens are charging $1 000 for purebred cats. Strays are not purebreds, even if they technically might be, because strays don’t come with their papers certifying lineage.

And they probably picked Main Coons because EMSL likes cats.
joelmichael

This should really be a bar graph and not a line graph.
Bugs

Antonius said:
A teaspoon of antimatter would make a crater the size of Wyoming, according to one expert.

Um… was this “expert” cackling madly at the time, meaningfully (but very carefully) holding a teaspoon up to the camera as he addressed the population?
- Antinous
  
  Believe it or not, my cousin annihilates anti-matter for a living. But he wasn’t the expert that I was referencing.
dragonfrog

Never mind a spaceship made of gold – make it out of marijuana. Up In Smoke, the Extremely High Overhead edition.
Rashkae

I’m a little surprised that printer ink isn’t closer to gold (is quite cheap on this chart, actually), but surely there will come an apt and quotable comparison to blood..
cha0tic

LSD has been surprisingly inflation proof, or has dropped in price. about 20 years ago it was Â£2 – Â£3 /trip Last time I talked to someone about it, reminiscing about the olden days, they told me it was still the same price.
Rossifumi

Okay look, I think these people have not bought good Marijuana yet.

The price of a gram of good Mariwanna is like $25, and Gold is $30

The chart is off.

i KNOW
guts

I like the chart at the bottom of the page showing the one compound that generally trumps them all when it comes to value by quantity, LSD.
brlittle

Of course, if you made your spaceship out of solid gold, the cost of getting it into orbit would rise exponentially. So your calculus is only accurate if you wish to build a wholly earthbound — and therefore purely decorative — spaceship.

Not that this is a bad idea, but I’m just sayin’.
Phrenzy

They missed HP printer ink. Surely the most expensive stuff out there.
lankybutmacho

Are YOU worth YOUR weight in gold? (don’t get your hopes up)
http://www.areyouworthyourweightingold.com/
Glossolalia Black

I love that Antimatter is at the high end of worth in weight ($26 Quadrillion). Do we even have that much American currency?
Bugs

BRLITTLE –
I only need to build a spaceship as a symbol of hope and manifest destiny to keep my cult members quiet and obedient.

Making it out of gold is actually a pretty neat idea. Incorruptable, pure, and will look great in photos for the news services. Eeeeexcelent…
Marley9

@Rossifumi-

Your right about this, they must have used a sample from south of the border. But please tell me you don’t also buy your water by the Dixie cup! I assume you live in LA, SF, NY, or ORD. Anywhere else, and the tops shelf is never that much.
dlelash

What kind of teaspoon would you have to use for that anyway?
Kieran O’Neill

#5: Lol. Well, if a nanogram is enough to power a manned spacecraft to Mars and back, I suspect that a pound of the stuff could probably vapourise the planet.

Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t have that kind of money (or the resources it represents). Yet, anyway…
- Antinous
  
  I suspect that a pound of the stuff could probably vapourise the planet.
  
  A teaspoon of antimatter would make a crater the size of Wyoming, according to one expert.
hassan-i-sabbah

Looks like its time to invest in Acid Futures!
The Blow Leprechaun

Huh. I’d always been told saffron was the most expensive substance on earth by weight. I’m surprised to see how low it actually ranks.
FreakCitySF

http://www.cockeyed.com/science/gallon/liquid.html
sabik

surprisingly enough, dimes and quarters have the same density

This is perhaps less surprising if we remember that dimes and quarters were originally designed to have this property.

Î·
stratojoe

Ah.. soaring to new heights in pedantry!

(i know.. it’s still fun)