Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Image
Topics: NASA, Space, Science, Technology
Callum Jones
An asteroid worth a whopping $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 that NASA is in the process of capturing could have shocking unintended consequences.
In 2023, the space agency announced that it was going to set off for the valuable asteroid, named 16 Psyche.
Thought to contain precious metals, including gold, iron and nickel, NASA is really keen to get its hands on the asteroid.
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"Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form," the space agency said in a statement released in July 2023.
The mission officially began in October 2023 as the spacecraft was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Traveling at a speed of approximately 84,000mph through space, it's expected to reach the valuable asteroid in August 2029.
While 16 Psyche may have been known about for a long time, experts are continuing to learn new things about the valuable asteroid all the time.
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Newsweek reports that the projected value of the asteroid is 100,000 times the value of the world's $100 trillion global domestic product due to the amount of gold, platinum and cobalt in it. That's theoretically enough to make everyone on the planet a billionaire. Yikes.
Many have flocked to the comments section to express concerns that such an event could lead to gold becoming worthless, which in turn, would lead to a lot of people losing money.
One person said: "It wouldn't make anyone billionaires but it will turn a lot billionaires to 0. Gold will lose its entire value."
While a second added: "The price of gold would drop to a fraction of a penny an ounce, and nobody would become a billionaire from it. Simple supply and demand."
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NASA estimates that this oddly shaped asteroid, which has a surface area of about 64,000 square miles (165,800 square kilometres), is made up of 30 to 60 percent metal.
It could also contain the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet which is one of the building blocks of our solar system.
And if the asteroid's materials really are worth $10 quintillion dollars, and that wealth was divided between every single living person, everyone would become very rich indeed.
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There are some 8.062 billion humans alive, so dividing $10 quintillion dollars by our population would give us each a total of around $1.2 billion each.
I mean, it really is life changing stuff - so let's see what happens in the coming years, eh?