Supply goes up, price goes down. 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. 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. That symbolism represents real value. For other inquiries, Contact Us. 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. So a giant asteroid wouldn’t make us all billionaires. "But the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.". Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. Express. Because we cannot see or measure Earth’s core directly, Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created the terrestrial planets. It's hoped the probe will arrive at the hunk of metal in 2026. 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. Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk, 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. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. Have a confidential tip for our reporters? Yes, 16 Psyche and other asteroids will probably be mined for their metals. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. Mining asteroids has been an ambition for some scientists with some speculating the first person to be able to commercially mine them would become the first trillionaire on Earth. See today's front and back pages, download the newspaper, It’s because wealth mostly doesn’t come from big hunks of metal. News outlets are reporting that NASA is planning to visit an asteroid made of gold and other precious metals! What gives asteroid Psyche great scientific interest is that it is made of metal. 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). It then shipped these metals back to Europe and used them to pay for government expenditures (mostly wars).
Instead, the Psyche probe will be loaded with equipment to examine the probe's composition.
"The 'Titans of Gold' now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world," he told Oil Price. READ MORE: Saturn hiding life?
"But the four to five million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.". Mining asteroids has been an … 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. 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. Two space mining companies – backed by big-name investors – are gearing up for a gold rush after asteroid ownership was made legal in 2015.
The skills and knowledge in your head are also a form of wealth, even though they’re not counted in the official statistics. Psyche 16, discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, is nestled in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click here. 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? Fortunately, the space agency is taking the trip for scientific purposes and isn't planning on conducting any mining. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. A Trump Propaganda Campaign Goes Very Wrong, Trump Sets Debate Trap for Biden, Falls Into It. But De Beers needed more than that in order to prevent diamonds from eventually becoming commoditized -- and so it turned to marketing, launching one of the most effective advertising campaigns ever with the slogan, "A Diamond Is Forever." NASA Curiosity rover detects ‘surprising’ methane spike. We pay for your stories! 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. NASA is set to reach Psyche 16 in 2026 with the probe being sent to examine it being sent out in 2022. For this reason, it's believed that the giant asteroid may actually be the exposed core of an early planet that lost its rocky outer layers. Something a bit like a golden asteroid happened once before.
If you want to get rich, don’t think about how to seize scarce resources. Planetary Resources was formed in 2012 and received investment from Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. 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. 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. It's thought that Psyche is one of these relics, a catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). 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. Psyche 16, discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, is nestled in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 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.
Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources each have their eyes on the 2011 UW158 asteroid which is twice the size of the Tower of London and worth up to £4.5trillion. 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).
The impossibility of extracting untold riches from 16 Psyche teaches two important lessons about how wealth really works. The asteroid is most likely a survivor of violent hit-and-run collisions, common when the solar system was forming.