Hubble captures photo of asteroid worth 70,000 times the global economy
Jan 5, 2021
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Hubble has taken quite a lot of stunning images over its three-decade-long existence. And recently, it took managed to capture a photo of the asteroid 16 Psyche in the most detailed image so far. What’s special about it? Well, one of the things that make it special is that it contains iron and nickel worth around $10,000 quadrillion. For comparison, that’s 70,000 times the global economy.
16 Psyche was discovered a long time ago: Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis first spotted it on 17 March 1852. It hasn’t been explored from up close so far, but NASA plans to send a spacecraft to explore it in 2022. According to NASA, its size is 173 miles (279km) by 144 miles (232,) by 117 (189) miles. It’s one of the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist Dr. Tracy Becker recently discussed the first ultraviolet observations of 16 Psyche. This asteroid could be interesting for astronomers for a variety of reasons. First, it’s made almost entirely from metal instead of rock and ice. “We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” said Dr. Becker.
According to Robb Report, the asteroid’s worth is $10,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros, right? If NASA miraculously managed to bring the asteroid back, sell it, and split the earnings between all people on Earth, each of 7.5 billion us would get approximately $1.3 billion. I must admit that this made little dollar signs appear in my eyes, but of course, we can only fantasize.
Other than the “cost” of this huge mass of iron and nickel, they indicate that the 16 Psyche could be the leftover core of a planet. “Earth has a metal core, a mantle and crust,” Dr. Becker explained. “It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.”
In August 2022, NASA plans to send a spacecraft to examine the asteroid further. If everything goes as planned, the Psyche spacecraft should arrive at the asteroid in early 2026 and spend 21 months in orbit. During this time, the spacecraft is planned to map and study 16 Psyche’s properties and determine whether it’s indeed the core of a planet. If it is, it could perhaps give us more insight into the core of our own home planet, too.
[via Robb Report]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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129 responses to “Hubble captures photo of asteroid worth 70,000 times the global economy”
Oh don’t worry I’m sure Biden will sign up to prevent those evil capitalists from ruining the space enviroment
#WTF
Robert Hicks you mean those greedy, money grubbing, seditious Trump followers!
well let’s hope it never reaches near earth, or we’ll redefine the words “greedy” and “pathetic”
If it ever reaches earth it will blow earth into pieces that will scatter into the entire universe, would be my guess
The plan to bring it to earth will ironically destroy the planet.
Don Navarro – There is no such plan, and certainly won’t be in our lifetimes…
Burt Johnson it was more of a plot twist than anything
You mean ironnickally?
Haha
If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that joke, I would be an oxycodone addict.
To be clear, the image in the story is NOT what Hubble took. Hubbles images can be found by following the Robb Report link to the actual paper, where you can see the blobs of grey, infrared images that look nothing like this artist’s rendition. The story should SAY THAT.
Wow.. misleading “journalism”. Who knew that could happen?
Link to the actual photos here
Link to the actual “photo” here
Thanks. What a disappointment. My 3 year old can come up with a better image of an asteroid.
?????????
The image doesn’t even look like a photo, more like an artist’s conception.
Thanks for the info. That would be a 50 mile wide crater, right next to another almost as big in the artist’s rendition. That would be something to see.
https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Asteroid_Mining
leave it to humans to describe an amazing celestial object in terms of how it compares to our economy…
What difference does it make, we’ll never a penny of it, unless it’s taxed. Then who knows.
But srsly – those “craters?” – this never ends well in the movies…
Hahaha and here we are a whole planet enslaved by their masters because of “precious” materials… ???
Watch out, BLM is now going to loot and riot because of your “racist” joke.
Maybe through some cosmic game of marbles something will bump it and send it careening towards earth, and people will stop whining about global warming?
How big is it?
About as big as my left nut.
So it’s pretty small…
???
Whenever I hear people say Biggie Smalls I hear Pretty Smalls. Then I think of small nuts. Which leads me to think of peanuts. Then I get dry mouth and need a 40.
Must be one bad std you got.
Are you illiterate or have the attention span of a goldfish? The answer to your question is in the article. Must suck being you.
The anger of this comment implies that it actually sucks being you!
Little man, big mouth. Go away
Big enough & solid enough to destroy any planet it decides to crash into. An explosion of incalculable magnitude
Second paragraph in
According to NASA, its size is 173 miles (279km) by 144 miles (232,) by 117 (189) miles. It’s one of the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
I can see Elon Musk trying to capture it
Unfortunately, we are going to have to share the bounty with a few more than the 7.5 million people populating this earth!?
They meant billion. That’s what the math works out to.
Nope, I did the math (I did the monster math) and it comes out to $13,171,759.70 per person out of
approx 759,200,000,000 total people. The author did the wrong math at quite a large factor
Americans, not the world.
Thought I posted this already, so you may see it twice. Anyhoo, your monster isn’t very good at math. $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 / 7,500,000,000 is $1.333 billion. Part of your error is that there’s not 759 billion people, there’s 7.5 billion. Off by a factor of 100, as is your answer.
Your total people is off by a factor of 100, as is your answer. There aren’t 759 billion people, there are 7.5 billion.
Lawd have mercy child
My ex wife’s butt cheeks are that size and weight. Let’s talk a billion instead of a million ,when it comes to population. Maybe a little proof reading would help.
No wonder our country is going to shit in rapid order even the most educated scientific researchers of america the greatest bunch of explorers look like a troop of chimpanzees fucking a football before the entire world on the world wide web …. Wake up America before we are fighting off those less fortunates that still strive to survive and crave our natural resources and abundance of dumbass metropolitan citizen waiting in line to be slaves to another tyrannical government. Roman re-run..
Have you seen Amazing Race. OMG. The less fortunate live in shit, literally. It’s like, sweep up your trash at least. The poorest of the poor in America are sparkling clean in comparison.
Buy them brooms not food or canned soups.
Amazing race? WTF ? Lol I’m going to assume that you are not one of those less fortunates!
LOL…. Stop.
Yeah right. Kids born after 1999 don’t even know what proof reading is.
I remember the nuns slapped me in my face for every typo. **Whack**Whack* Or worse they say my cursive writing was not properly looped or crossed or dotted and they rolled up newspaper and whacked my ass, raw.
Oh wait…that explains my devotion to sex clubs at convents. Or why when my wife dresses up as a nun for Halloween I howl like a wolf in heat.
The amount of typos in this supposed professional article, is pathetic.
I agree
They must have fixed it, except for “millions” instead of “billions”. I don’t see any other typos, and I’m a not-half-bad proofreader.
“HUBBLE CAPTURES PHOTO” is a typo. It should of [sic] said: “CLOWN FINGERPAINTS NAPKIN”
Your example sounds so [sic].
LOL! It wasn’t a typo, but it’s very misleading that the headline implies that the drawing below it is a photo.
Never mind that the whole article is BS, centered around an “artists conception” without showing any actual photo.
The world population is about 8 billion now.
Ugh. Saddest news ever.
They’re gonna try and haul it to earth. Dinosaurs did the exact same thing.. look where they’re at now.
You guys are great photographers but crap economists – the price of iron and nickel would fall through the floor to pretty much zero. Let me know when they plan to lasso it and I’ll short the market
and if they DID maintain the price and distribute 1.3 billion to every human… a gallon of gas, or a loaf of bread, would cost about $50,000, and that’s without factoring in the supply drought created when everybody decides “hey, I just got 1.3 billion… I’m not going to my oil drilling/refining/trucking/selling job anymore…”
Yup, people still need to be working.
The balance is always about income to living expense. Not only sheer wealth.
No, they don’t boomer. You just have the mentality suffering is necessity to success.
Soo, who does the things that need to be done then? Someone has to work,but I guess that is someone else’s problem huh. Working for a living is not suffering. Wealth given does not last and therefore is a detriment to happiness, wealth earned usually lasts longer and earning it usually makes people happy. Also, money is supposed to be a universal representation of effort that you trade for others efforts, but humans can’t seem to understand that and fight over it.
Again Boomer, there are other ways to do things, if you use your brain to think. One, the average job a human does is fit for a machine. Second, did I say there would be a ban on work or nobody would, no wait you did. Third, maybe try searching for solutions you lemming before saying there is only one way, so you’re never wrong. Fourth screw you and your cult of personality, possession Stan.
Just shut the fuck up. Nobody cares what the fuck you say. Every post you make is just getting down voted. Take a hint.
Go troll somewhere else.
Telemarketing
Bookkeeping Clerks
Compensation and Benefits Managers
Receptionists
Couriers
Proofreaders
Computer Support Specialists
Market Research Analysts
Advertising Salespeople
Retail Salespeople
You know what can do all those jobs AI. I also believe in Universal income and believe the pandemic has shown what such a thing can do. I also know that Jeff Bezos could give every person on earth 1 million and he’d still have like 12 billion left. You and the rest of your cult of personality, whether it’s boomers, or whatever reason you have for accepting the status quo bother me.
I have been dealing with people like you my whole life. There is no way to make an accessible website that’s non-traditional, there is no way to start a Maker Space under $5k, there is no way to deliver and get laptops out to kids before Xmas. GLAD I NEVER LISTENED TO PEOPLE LIKE YOU, who also seem to be the same kinda people in charge. So if you’re not a boomer, you think like one.
Your logic is about as good as your math. Bezos could give everyone on earth $25, and he wouldn’t have anything left.
Your income doesn’t even factor into your net worth. ?
182,000,000,000/7,800,000,000 is net worth versus the current projected population, which is $/23.33 not $25. Which I assume is what you’re feeling smug about?
Your net worth is like a financial snapshot, you don’t consider your annual income. Again, you’re part of a cult of personality. Likely of the same group, that still says people only use 10% of their brain, or it’s illegal to tell coworkers what you make.
LOL! Nothing you’ve said in any of your posts make a shred of sense. Is that intentional, or are you really that wacked?
I bet, plain English, facts, science and math are in this year, so sucks to be you. “Your income doesn’t factor into your net worth” what part of that don’t you get? Or, is pretending to be so illiterate and ignorant, you can’t digest basic English also considered trolling now? Is a basic equation beyond you? Please, enlighten me what went over your head, so I can explain it to you like a small child.
You’re in a cult of personality.
OK. It was an indirect answer, but thanks for it anyway. You really are that wacked. Have a nice day.
“Boomer.” What an asshole.
Boomer was never cool.
But yeah, it’s true.
If we did bring it back to Earth, the value of Nickel/Iron would plummet based on supply and demand principles. Or, if that didn’t happen, Inflation for sure.
No boomers never have been. Even less in the past few days here.
“Boomer” is a very femmine word to use. Be a man please.
I don’t think Terry Cruz would agree with your logic, ROFLMAO. Men don’t use *feminine words? Nice logic, you sound sexist.
What the hell are you talking about? Your post is completely nonsensical and completely off topic.
On top of it I’m melenial. Thanks for telling what I am not.
Go troll somewhere else.
Nonsensical? Perhaps if you educated yourself on many ways and alternatives to we have income setup here, that work, function and have been tested. When I say there are many jobs a human shouldn’t be doing, I am talking about the advancement of technology. Again, if you’re not a boomer you sure think like one.
Why go to work when money will buy robots and new technology to makes it happen, you idiot?
The worse part about us getting 1.5 billion is that now half of America will proceed with their “hip hop” career, or sex change, or you exwife husband still expects alimony and this time he wants more to suite his extravagant new life style.
The best part about getting the 1.5 billion is no more mandatory inclusive/diversity or harassment videos to sit through. No more being victims of women’s mean girls nonsense at work. Oh the joys of being away from petty women. And for men, the best thing about having money is that you can have a wife and hot imported German, Jamaican, Asian or Russian or any country side pieces and buy them their own condo and cute dog, best make up, Lalique lingerie, gym membership of course and the best perfumes and pay to have them tighten their vajayjayes, or backdoors if you are into men, no judgement here.
Speaking of men, best part of being a rich woman is never having to smell your husband’s dirty, brown, non whiped under crack or chose area when you perform a bj. Now you can pay to have a side piece, fresh, imported Latin boy, squeeky clean for YOUR pleasure.
This conversation is suppose to be about science, not your personal cynical perversions. I wanted to share this article with my scientific-minded grandson but you hijacked the intelectual audience who wanted to learn something.
Ok, Karen.
Funny, your import wife/boy toy won’t need you because they also have their own 1.3 billion to buy their own mansion on the coast. I guess we won’t have cam girls either.
In a hypothetical world, maybe.
How do you expect to have a wife or ‘side piece’ when they too are getting their 1.5 billion? Who designs and makes the robots you purport to do all this shit you say can be automated. Your reply is the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. Ridiculously short sighted and absolutely disgusting. This amount of money would wildly inflate everything. We all have to work, even on UBI. And if UBI becomes reality just existing on that would be a shitty life giving just enough to literally survive and nothing more. You are so naive that it’s actually painful to read what you write.
Pretty sure no one uses gallons except the US
?????
? I’d make Nickels out of it. Then I’d use the Nickles to buy dollars, until ‘paper ran out’ I’d burn those dollars, all of them and continue to spend my surplus Nickels.
No doubt I’d need to pay an army to protect my stash.
Who wants to live that way? ?
Yeah too bad the spoils would be claimed and divided amongst the “select few” economic powers while the rest of us remain in poverty and struggling. Nice prospect for anyone rich enough to get their piece of that pie though
what a waste of tax dollars I mean as far as I can see I haven’t seen anything beneficial for us humans in the U.S from these Projects
If you have any desire to help humanity please don’t have children
Tell that to gay people please. They make real gays have guilt for going to bareback sex parties. Plus, two gay twinks raising boys only creates more Proud Boys.
To anyone who needs more “what the actual f&ck” crazy in their lives Siesta_Bear here has you totally 100% covered
If it is valuable as supposed, wouldn’t it make financial sense for for someone “Elon” to go and mine it?
As somebody else pointed out, bringing that amount of nickel iron to market on Earth would crater the market. Plus, there is the problem of safely getting it to Earth in a usable fashion.
However, if we find asteroids made of lithium and other rare earth metals, that is an entirely different matter. In our quest for battery powered everything, we are quickly depleting the Earth’s supply of those metals.
It takes 550,000 gallons of water to process 1 ton of lithium. 60,000 tons of lithium to produce 1 million EV’s.
Slight problem
Fortunately the water is completely recyclable.
What’s the problem?
Touche’, your right on both counts. My suggestion was to mine it. It certainly wouldn’t be safe “for life on the planet” or financially smart to slam an asteroid onto/into/through the parking lot of the gigafactory.
Why not at least pretend to attempt a once-over proof read of your article before publishing it? Too much to expect these days I suppose.
Thanks for this story, but you really need a copy editor. This reads like a rushed first draft.
“Hubble captures photo…” and the impressively detailed pic below headline is not that photo.
So. Much. Journalisming.
7.5 million of us ?! Gates only just now rolling out his “vaccine” , it will take time to kill us all off with that poison bruh.
There is lots of Nickel and Iron on the earth now. If this is a typical core metallic mass, it will have only small amounts of platinum, gold etc metals evenly distributed through the mass, so the Nickel and Iron are the main easily recoverable metals. On the earth hydrothermal processes extract various metals from the crust and transport them to the earth’s surface.
In essence water and carbonate rock are subducted deep under the earth into the molten zone. The water turns into a high pressure gas. There is also sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide and silicon dioxide in this fluid. This is also at molten rock temperatures and extreme high pressures – this is the hydrothermal fluid. It is also much lighter than the local melted rock, so it rises. This fluid extracts trace metals from the rock into the fluid via diffusion.. As it rises to the surface, the water turns to steam, the CO2 and SO2 and H2S flash off as gasses. When they do this, the fluid loses the ability to carry dissolved metals and they precipitate. The SiO2 also precipitates as quartz veins. These veins are a mixed bag of metals etc. Many mines are composed of such veins. The black smokers on the sea floors at depth are similar. The water carries the minerals and they cover the sea floor to great depths in some areas (ocean mine potential – much the same hydrothermal extraction process).
Metals found in space will have value in space construction, but it will take hundreds of years or more for the earth’s surface metals to runout and higher prices to make space mining for earth uses to be economically viable.
That’s not a photo, it’s an artist rendition. This is the photo:
Ummm
..once that much nickle floods the market, the price drops considerably..pretty ignorant untruth ful and irrespon
sible reporting…as usual
I see that the brain trust is out in force and decided to comment. Spelling errors might be due to the author’s primary language not being English or because the medium they work in (digital news) has minimal editorial oversight. Push as much work out as possible to make a living. Quantity over quality. Self-editing own material. Could be another. I personally think the tone of the article is meant to inspire and get certain minds to dream and reach. For the next generations sake I hope some do. Because as evidenced by most of the other comments. Working together for better got thrown out the window in 2016. So they are pretty much f…..d.
Good day to all you soothsayers and wisemen.
Ha! Hvala Vam Ms.Djudjic, for the article. Whatever the intent. At the very least I can point my children towards a possible future industry. Extra terrestrial resource/material procurement. Zero G mining and smelting. Zero G manufacturing. Gone.
If this truly is the remanent core of a past planet, wouldn’t it further support the disruption theory that theorized the destruction of a fifth planet “Phaeton” created the asteroid belt instead of the accretion theory
Of course the economic numbers presented here, that this thing is worth 70 times the global economy, are completely ridiculous. If we had that much nickel the price of nickel would plummet, we’d have an oversupply, it would be cheap and most of it would go unused.
Don’t let the Chinese or the transformers know about it. Because they don’t care how many of us they kill in the process of getting it. O crap the Biden already have a deal with China to get it.
The difficulty in harvesting this rock would greatly increase the required selling price of its resources. Bring it too close to earth, and its gravity would produce extinction-scale tides. Break off a chunk too big, or lose control prior to re-entry, and a dense metal meteorite might, uh, break some stuff. Too much risk, too much expense. A global economy could bankrupt itself in the pursuit of this venture.
Hmm… If the “global economy” consumed only nickel and iron, this title would make sense…
Otherwise it’s just click bait … or a truly ignorant author
Like a banned twitter account…
First NASA would never just give everyone money for something they did. But they can’t anyways, it’s all lies. How can you tell what somethings is made of by looking at it? You can’t! I know with special Lazer equipment we can, here ” On Earth”. The Whole Hubble telescope is lies. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, yes they have it and I’m sure it is badass. But do you really think they wouldn’t have improved on it’s design? And built hundreds more with the way our technologies have changed in the last 30yrs? Also they will never make me a believer that they know what our Earth’s core is made of… Why? Because they have never been there. What’s the furthest anyone has been able to drill down into Earth? 8 or 9 miles? That’s a very very small percentage of how far it is to reach Earth’s core… What they teach us in school & how they say the Earth & our Galaxy works is lies, maybe not all. Most of it is nothing more than a hypothesis.
Send the space miners
Journalism is dead.
I hate journalists.
Before they would be fired on the spot because of a single typo. Now, the writers are so dumb or lazy or arrogant or all of the above and they don’t even bother to proof their writing.
Split between the inhabitants of earth? They would likely to have paid in one way or another but they wouldn’t get anything unless they were willing to fight for it.
With so much iron and nickel maybe the price would go down dramatically and then it would not cost that much.
Dibs
Total bullshit article. This shitty site is blocked now on this end. Fuck you Dunja.
Haha. I share a 1/16th agreement. The beautiful “photo” was amazing and it is fake.
Best part: it only takes 100 miiion 18 wheeler trucks 50, 000 years to tow it.. if the drivers skirt around Federal mandates imposed on truckdrivers we might shave off 5,000 years and push to 45,000.. but you know on the other those truckdrivers that get distracted by coke meth and strippers may show in 52,000 assuming they don’t marry a stripper and decide not to show up .. I hear hijacked cargo goes for a lot if the Pluto Mob fences it.. Gotti’s got nothing compared to Wise Guys do Caper on Pluto by live in Uranus..
It’s fake just like nasa is fake. No one has ever walked that moon… Nor will they ever
Ok, TrumpNewsBunny
Why are the kilometres in brackets instead of the miles? The entire world uses the Metric system, so it should be the default measurement listed. This is the web, not the US.
The US have birth to the web, so respect the freakin’ mileages.
Tim Berners-Lee is English, not American. Try again?