Is it gold? Diamonds? Or exotic chemical substances?
121727
Antimatter is the most expensive substance ever made.\n\nAt present, antimatter costs $62.5 trillion per gram
235657
Gold remains gold no matter what. The problem is with the base metals gold jewelry is mixed with. Pure gold is 24 karats. Most of the jewelry you purchase is 14K or 10K. The higher the karat, the more gold. Example, 14K means that it is 14 parts gold, 10 parts base metal (for hardness and color), for a total of 24 parts. Therefore 10K is only 10 parts gold and 14 parts base metal. The base metal oxidizes and changes color. The more base metal (10K) the more likely it is to discolor, become brittle, or break. Touching silver has no effect. Just use a simple cleaner (ammonia and water) or buy a jewelry cleaner. Keep away from bleach, either when cleaning or in chlorinated water. This can do severe damage to the base metals. And do not clean your gold and silver jewelry in the same cleaner. The adverse effect is on the silver, not the gold. Hope this helps.
305658
There is not.  Unlike gold/silver, diamonds are very abundant.  Their price is manipulated and controlled by DeBears.  I would not invest in any type of instrument such as you are describing.\n\nDebears regularly adds/subtracts from the market for specific types of stones depending on what challengers are trying to do.  Ie if a country tries to sell diamonds outside of Debear's pricing mechanisms/controls.  You could easily get killed with such an instrument.
461261
Most likely a diamond.  Diamonds show decisions in flow charts, so questions that can be answered yes/no are generally shown using them.
136026
The precious stones are diamond; some forms of corundum (ruby, sapphire, Oriental emerald, Oriental topaz, and Oriental amethyst); and emerald. The chief semiprecious stones are aquamarine, amethyst, topaz, garnet, tourmaline, spinel, peridot (see olivine), zircon (see zirconium), chrysoberyl, quartz, opal, turquoise, moonstone, and jade. The organic gems are pearl, amber, coral, and jet; of these, pearl is usually counted as a precious stone.\n\n=)
564107
How to answer this?  I actually have several books entirely on how gems are faked or modified and the con census is that it can be difficult at best.  To find out what sort of stones you are likely to find in any given area do a general search on the geology of it and the surrounding countries.  If you are lucky he might find some Persian Spider Web Turquoise from Iran (though the mines are supposed to be played out now) as you should figure in the trade routes between the other countries as well.  I know the area is copper rich so turquoise and malachite almost certainly.  Try doing a search on "GEMS OF AFGHANISTAN".  From there you can refine your search parameters and add in secondary searches of fake and altered stone.  By the way, fake and altered are not the same as many gems can be treated by heat, radiation and other methods to improve the quality.  They are still the same type of gem just a better grade than they started out as.
356220
Gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium...\nSpot prices and historical:\n\nhttp://kitco.com/market/
317003
The average diamond is approximately 3 billion years old. Some newer some older. Thats about 2/3 the age of the planet.\nDiamonds are not created in the earths crust, but rather deep in the earths mantle at about 1800 degrees F. The diamonds are brought to the surface by volcanic activity.
669421
What extract are you talking about? Different materials require different extraction methods.
471451
cotton, tobacco, opium, just to name a few. But do some of your own research! :-)
2797
Copper in chips and diamonds in drives lead to a shiny future.\n\nThis is one nice article.
415435
It wouldn't suprise me if you get a load of snotty guffaws in response to this question, but you have a point. Personally I prefer silver to gold, although the metal with a lesser value, for me it has a class that in some items gold cannot carry off. It's all down to your own opinion as to what appeals to you isn't it?
59788
Nothing Gold can Stay\n\nI think
69799
Oxygen - Water, that should be easy to talk about.\n\n"Among the relatively few gold compounds of practical importance are gold(I) chloride, AuCl; gold(III) chloride, or gold trichloride, AuCl3; and chlorauric acid, HAuCl4. All three are involved in the electrolytic refining of gold. "\nhttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-2770\n\nCarbon - Carbon Dioxide http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/vchemlib/mol/simple/gases/carbon_dioxidebak.html\n\nHydrogen or carbon  - methane, natural gas.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane\n\nIts salts, especially silver nitrate and silver halides, are also widely used in photography (which is the largest single end use of silver). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver\n\nCalcium Carbonate\n"Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound, with chemical formula CaCO3.\n\nIt is commonly used as an antacid, and is the active ingredient in agricultural lime."\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate\n\nNitrous Oxide\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_Oxide
206221
I'm pretty sure it is a Diamond. Here's my reasoning:\nDiamonds family name = carbon = black in appearance\n"Give a girl a buck" = Diamonds are a girls best friend\nMany nice colors = Refraction of light through a diamond displays many colors.....
642666
Under a pressure of 54.000 bar and at a temperature of 1.400 degrees Celsius is it possible to make from graphite synthetic diamonds.\n\nIn 2004 existed a start-up company named GEMESIS, which produced synthetic diamonds cheaper than natural diamonds.
88405
DNA, perhaps?  Deoxyribonucleic acid, that is.