Its average diameter is about 140 miles (226 kilometers) — about one-sixteenth the diameter of Earth’s Moon or about the distance between Los Angeles and San Diego. But in fact, there’s a more fundamental reason why a giant golden asteroid wouldn’t make the world fabulously rich. READ MORE: Saturn hiding life? But a giant asteroid full of gold only adds a little to real wealth. OK, now for the bad news: This isn’t going to happen.

And because a golden asteroid wouldn’t increase the world’s total demand for gold, there’s no way it could create quadrillions of dollars of new real wealth. But the number of metals introduced to the markets on Earth could damage commodity prices and far exceed what the economy could handle. How NASA found ‘cradle for existence’, Cosmonauts refuse to supply semen samples from space: ‘No-one wants to, SpaceX's Starlink will be a ‘forerunner’ for Mars internet, Life on Mars? We’re all going to be richer than Jeff Bezos! Express. NASA bombshell: Hubble Space Telescope makes shock new discovery, NASA Moon landing warning: Humans at risk from crippling illness, Intern Brenton Chase's impression of Psyche 16, NASA engineers celebrate after a successful landing on Mars, UFO sighting: ‘Alien craft’ spotted during NASA Apollo 12 moon walk, UFO sighting: NASA films ‘largest UFO ever recorded’ exiting Sun, A NASA press conference after spacecraft Juno successfully begins orbit around Jupiter, Saturn hiding life? NASA has roped in billionaire Elon Musk to help it probe a nearby asteroid that contains enough gold to make everyone on Earth a billionaire. It recently emerged that an asteroid obliterated early human civilisations in a catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago. If all goes well, a Nasa/SpaceX mission to the asteroid will launch in summer 2022 from Cape Canaveral. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Let us know in the comments! Rejoice, people of Earth!

Owners of a golden asteroid could conceivably try to pull a similar trick, launching advertising campaigns to get people to start using gold for more things -- building materials, perhaps, or clothing. Think about how to use resources in an innovative way to make something people truly want or need. Email us at [email protected], Mum shares adorable ‘pay packet’ builders gave to her six-year-old, Ant McPartlin shuts £20m company after divorce to Lisa Armstrong, EastEnders' killer Lucas Johnson making an explosive return for ex-wife Denise, Inside Helen Flanagan's incredible home as she prepares to welcome third baby, Penny Lancaster 'shamed' herself into losing weight after putting on a stone, ©News Group Newspapers Limited in England No.
NASA is set to reach Psyche 16 in 2026 with the probe being sent to examine it being sent out in 2022. That symbolism represents real value. The prefix "16" signifies that it was the sixteenth minor planet in or… CDC’s Virus Messaging Is Too Complicated to Trust, Bed Bath & Beyond Is on the Verge of an Epic Comeback, You Can Oppose Trump While Supporting Reopening Schools, How the Office Will Change When Everyone’s Back, Democrats Are Too Affluent to Be Socialists, Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Is Russia’s Problem to Solve. If you want to get rich, don’t think about how to seize scarce resources. The Sun reports that the gold, platinum, iron and nickel on Psyche 16 are worth £8,000 quadrillion (£8,000,000,000,000,000,000).

Yes, 16 Psyche and other asteroids will probably be mined for their metals. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click here. News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services. One of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt, 16 Psyche is a giant metal asteroid, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. What do you think Nasa will find on Psyche? Mining asteroids has been an … A Trump Propaganda Campaign Goes Very Wrong, Trump Sets Debate Trap for Biden, Falls Into It. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. Nasa reckons 16 Psyche is a survivor of violent hit-and-run collisions between planets which were common when the solar system was forming. And, scientists have discovered a "Super-Earth" 31 light-years away that humans could one day colonise. Planetary Resources was formed in 2012 and received investment from Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. Arizona State University researchers say that Psyche 16 was found in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, who named it after the ancient Greek goddess of the soul. Scott Moore, who heads up EuroSun Mining, said the sheer amount of gold in the asteroid threatens to throw the gold industry into chaos. At current prices, the … "The asteroid is considered unique, as it appears to largely be made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet – one of the building blocks of our solar system.". The British businessman and colonial government official Cecil Rhodes consolidated all South African diamond mining under the De Beers company, an effective monopoly which later was controlled by the Oppenheimer family. As any introductory economics student knows, price is a function of relative scarcity -- flood the market with gold, and it will go from being a rarity to being a common decoration. Creating wealth goes way beyond bringing lots of precious metal to Earth. Rejoice, people of Earth! "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. But it seems unlikely that they could persuade the world to pay a premium for the sheer volume of gold coming from an asteroid like 16 Psyche -- especially if a rival company showed up with another golden space rock. It is believed to have been formed during a violent collision during the formation of the solar system.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. It is thought to be the exposed iron core of a protoplanet, and is the most massive metallic M-type asteroid. Musk's rocket-building outfit SpaceX will join forces with the space agency to fire an uncrewed spacecraft to the solid metal blob 16 Psyche as early as 2022. Because gold and silver were used for money at that time, a drop in the value of gold and silver meant a drop in the value of money -- in other words, inflation. And second, this example shows that real wealth doesn’t actually come from golden hoards. In other news, an asteroid nine times the size of the Empire State Building will skim past Earth next month. Every world explored so far by humans (except gas giant planets such as Jupiter or Saturn) has a surface of ice or rock or a mixture of the two. We pay for your stories!

Scott Moore, chief of EuroSun Mining has spoken about the potentially cataclysmic effects of extracting these elements. View our online Press Pack. We've known about Psyche for a while, but its potential to wreak havoc on Earth's economy was recently touched upon by a veteran miner. The metal would have various industrial applications and make nice jewelry and dental fillings, but it wouldn’t spark a new industrial revolution, or dramatically bring down the cost of goods and services, or in general make human life much better or more comfortable. So a giant asteroid wouldn’t make us all billionaires. The Sun reports that the gold, platinum, iron and nickel on Psyche 16 are worth £8,000 quadrillion (£8,000,000,000,000,000,000). Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. Fortunately, the space agency is taking the trip for scientific purposes and isn't planning on conducting any mining. newspaper archive. Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? It may completely collapse the £59.5trillion global economy. Predictably, things went south. This object is over 200 km (120 mi) in diameter and contains about 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Asteroid mining has been proposed by some as a means of replenishing dwindling resources on Earth, some astrologers have said that asteroid mining could detect extraterrestrial intelligence as aliens may have done the practise in the past and left evidence. It's thought that Psyche is one of these relics, a catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). Even a sandwich is wealth, at least until it goes bad. In total, it's estimated that the object's various metals are worth a mind-boggling £8,000-quadrillion (that's an eight followed by 18 zeroes). While there's been speculation about how much gold there is to be found, scientists feel that 16 Psyche is mainly made from iron and nickel. In about 1500, Spain conquered South and Central America and discovered large deposits of gold and silver. So könnte der Asteroid Psyche 16, der 1852 vom italienischen Astronomen Annibal de Gasparis entdeckt wurde, mehr Gold enthalten, als die Erde für die kommenden Jahrhunderte benötigen würde. Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. NASA has roped in billionaire Elon Musk to help it probe a nearby asteroid that contains enough gold to make everyone on Earth a billionaire. We May Get a Covid Vaccine Soon. Have a confidential tip for our reporters? Over the years, De Beers managed to defend this monopoly against challenges from various upstarts, by hoarding diamonds when prices were low and flooding the market to destroy competitors. Psyche, which is 120 miles wide, is loaded with heaps of platinum, iron and nikel. Residents of Shasta County have taken resistance to Covid-19 restrictions to another level: “full-on anarchy.”. This would make its composition similar to the Earth's core. Psyche 16, discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, is nestled in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It comes from the productive activities of human beings creating things that other human beings desire. It's hoped the probe will arrive at the hunk of metal in 2026. Comments are subject to our community guidelines, which can be viewed, , Senior Digital Technology and Science Reporter, Nasa's Psyche Mission (artist's impression) is launching in 2022, Elon Musk's rocket-building outfit SpaceX will join forces with Nasa to fire an uncrewed spacecraft to Psyche, An artist's impression of Psyche's surface, This graphic shows the location of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids (white) which are thought to be a relic of a much earlier era of the solar system.