The treasure of Juan Fernández

I had been wanting to open a section on innumeracy for a while, and the news of the supposed discovery of the treasure of the Juan Fernández islands gives me the chance to do it.

There are 2 important topics to go over here: the first is credibility, and the second is the innumeracy some tabloids displayed in publishing this story.

Credibility

Supposedly a robot detected the presence of precious stones and gold over a certain area of the island. I heard the lawyer for the company that built the robot Arturito (Chile’s name for R2-D2) on television, and he said the robot detected the gold in an area of volcanic rock, where it is impossible for there to be gold.

First, without being an expert in geology, but knowing volcanic rock, it would be obvious at once if someone had dug in an area of volcanic rock. The archaeologists who have worked on the island would have noticed before.

Second, supposedly the robot is given a sample of what is being looked for, and it finds elements with the same atomic properties as the sample. This robot is said to have been used to search for missing persons, for example. Arturito would be a true electronic bloodhound. Again, the lawyer said on TV that there is software specially developed by the company that lets it tell the elements apart.

According to television, the robot Arturito beams gamma rays into the ground to identify the elements.

• Do you know how gamma rays are emitted?
• Do you realize that to emit gamma rays, the robot has to handle radioactive elements? From the pictures I saw on television, the robot contains a plain ordinary PC and a casing that looks like aluminum; nowhere do you see the lead shielding needed to operate it.

This is a picture of a gamma ray sensor, used to scan containers, as part of the Container Security Initiative:

It costs about 5 million dollars, and uses a Cobalt 60 particle accelerator, at an energy between 4-0 MeV.

If that technology exists, I don’t understand what they are doing hunting for treasure on Juan Fernández instead of exploiting the patent on this technology, because it is truly revolutionary.

I haven’t been able to find anything about Warner Tecnologías or the robot Arturito from before this story. The axiom says that if you’re not on Google, you don’t exist :).

So I don’t believe the robot Arturito does what it is said to do.

If I’m wrong, I hope someone corrects me, because I think it is wonderful that we are creating this technology in Chile.

Innumeracy

As for the innumeracy: the treasure is said to amount to some 800 tons. What kind of galleon carried that much gold?

Gold has a density 19.3 times that of water, which means that 1,000 liters of gold weigh 19.3 tons.

An English liquor barrel of 1688 had a capacity of 157 liters. In other words, it could hold about 3 tons of gold. So 800 barrels full of gold would be 2,400 tons of gold, and not 800 as the media report. (see:http://www.terra.cl/noticias/noticias.cfm?id_reg=540391&id_cat=302

The only explanation is that the barrels hold 1 ton of gold each, that is, they are smaller than normal barrels, which is rather odd.

Another matter is the size of the galleons. For example, Francis Drake’s famous Pelican weighed some 150 tons and measured 21.3m x 5.8m x 2.7m, which gives around 335 cubic meters. Its density is 0.45; to float it must not go over 1. 800 tons of gold would imply a density of 2.8, impossible for a galleon to carry. How much gold could it carry? Ask your 12-year-old nephew, and he will tell you the galleon could only carry, with enormous difficulty, 185 tons of gold.

Another matter is the contents of this supposed treasure, which are so fantastic that they already strip it of credibility.

But the worst part is that nothing has been dug up yet, and they are already fighting over who owns it.