Most people who want to run a serious sky-watch spend about forty-five minutes planning the observation setup and then three hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair getting cold. The uncomfortable chair problem is actually important — if you’re miserable by midnight you’ll pack up before anything happens, and the most interesting things at [...] Read more →
SDR Radio for Beginners: How to Listen for Anomalous Signals
A $25 USB dongle has turned an entire generation of hobbyists into radio operators without licenses, technical training, or any hardware beyond a laptop. That’s not an exaggeration — the RTL-SDR dongle, originally designed as a cheap television receiver for [...] Read more →
Roughly 44,000 kilograms of meteoritic material falls on Earth every day. Most of it lands in the ocean or burns up entirely on the way down, but a meaningful fraction reaches the surface intact, and some of that ends up in fields, deserts, dry lake beds, and beaches where a metal detector [...] Read more →
When Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt walked into Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 with a team of airmen, he brought a radiation detector. This wasn’t theatrical — it was standard procedure for a military officer investigating an unknown object near a base that housed nuclear weapons. What his equipment found was elevated radiation [...] Read more →
“The mere existence of some yet unidentified flying objects necessitates a constant vigilance on the part of Project ‘Saucer’ personnel, and on the part of the civilian population.
“Answers have been—and will be—drawn from such factors as [...] Read more →
A photo of a purported UFO over Passaic, New Jersey in 1952. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Before 2017 the standard government position on UFOs was approximately: not our department, probably misidentifications, please stop asking. That position collapsed in December of that year when the New [...] Read more →
The Money Pit was discovered in 1795 by a teenager named Daniel McGinnis who found a circular depression in the ground on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia and started digging. Oak platforms appeared every ten feet. At ninety feet, the bottom flooded with seawater through a system of [...] Read more →
Geiger counters have long been used in the recovery of exotic materials that may contain radioactive particles. From detecting meteorites to space debris the instruments have held their place in modern history since the dawn of the atomic age. In 1979 the instruments played a significant role in the recovery [...] Read more →
On January 23, 1959, ten students and young graduates from the Ural Polytechnic Institute set out for a winter trek through Russia’s northern Ural Mountains. One turned back after a few days with joint pain. The other nine continued. Their leader was a 23-year-old engineering student [...] Read more →
Science in Plain English · Particle Physics · 2023
A plain-English review of the landmark 2023 ALPHA experiment that finally answered one of the oldest questions in physics — and why one man who died in 1727 deserves a share of the credit.
In December 1980, US Air Force personnel encountered an unknown craft in a Suffolk forest over three nights. The deputy base commander recorded it in real time. The tape is public domain.
In the early hours of December 26, 1980, a security patrol at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England reported [...] Read more →
Edward James Ruppelt – St. Louis Post-DispatchPhoto published on Mar 08, 1953
From 1952 to 1969, the United States Air Force ran the longest official UFO investigation in American history out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. They called it Project Blue Book, and by the time they shut it [...] Read more →
The argument about Bigfoot tends to go one of two ways: either you’ve never looked at the evidence closely and think it’s obviously ridiculous, or you have looked at it and can’t quite explain certain things away. The serious researchers — and there are serious researchers — don’t claim certainty. They claim [...] Read more →
Gold Scrap Calc.
🥇 Gold Scrap Metal Calculator
Instant melt value based on live London Fix gold price · USD · GBP · EUR · CHF · JPY
Gold Spot Price
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Gold Details
Scale weight in grams
Karat Purity
Select the karat stamp on your piece
🌍 Gold Karat Standards Around the World
Different regions favour different purity standards. Knowing the likely karat of a piece helps you select the correct value above.
Karat
Purity
Common Regions / Markets
% Pure
24K
999 / 999.9
China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia (investment bars, coins, ceremonial jewellery)
99.9%
22K
916
India, Middle East, South Asia (traditional bridal jewellery, sovereigns)
91.6%
18K
750
Europe (Italy, France, Switzerland), USA, Australia — most popular for fine jewellery worldwide
75.0%
14K
585
USA, Canada, Eastern Europe, Germany — dominant for everyday jewellery in North America
58.5%
12K
500
Rare; occasional use in vintage European and Asian gold-filled pieces
50.0%
10K
417
USA, Canada — legal minimum for jewellery sold as "gold" in the United States
41.7%
9K
375
United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Portugal — common in British hallmarked jewellery
37.5%
Hallmark stamps to look for:
999 or 24K = pure gold · 916 or 22K · 750 or 18K · 585 or 14K · 417 or 10K · 375 or 9K. European pieces often show the three-digit millesimal fineness (750, 585, 375) while North American pieces typically show the karat number (18K, 14K, 10K).
Melt values are theoretical and do not reflect refinery fees, dealer margins, or assay costs. For informational purposes only.
