Yesterday, we talked about pretty little rocks. Today, we are going to talk about a big rock named 16 Psyche. 16 Psyche is an asteroid located 230 million miles from Earth. It was first discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on March 17 of 1852. According to NASA, 16 Psyche measures 173 miles, by 144 miles, by 117 miles. This makes 16 Psyche one of the most massive objects caught up in the main asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
16 Psyche is thought to be the
leftover core of a planet. And what
makes this asteroid so valuable is that it appears, according to more recent
studies, to be comprised entirely of iron and nickel.
And I do mean valuable.
This giant rock is estimated to
be worth 70,000 times our present global economy. If we here on Earth managed to collectively
sell 16 Psyche and then evenly split the earnings, each of us (7.5 billion in
all) would receive a handsome $1.3 billion.
Not bad for the sale of one
rock.
IMAGE: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sources: Space (Amy Oliver), https://www.diyphotography.net
(Dunja Djudjic)
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