Posted on 07/17/2015 1:58:36 PM PDT by Red Badger
An asteroid worth a potential £3.5 trillion ($5.4 trillion) is due to pass by Earth on Sunday, and you can watch it live from 11pm UK time (6.30pm ET).
Asteroid 2011 UW-158's fly-by will be streamed live on the internet from an observatory in the Canary Islands.
The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, because it is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum that the company might one day want to exploit.
Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30 times closer than our nearest planet.
It is less than half a mile (1km) across, but is thought to be immensely valuable because of its platinum core.
An organisation call Slooh, that links telescopes to the internet for public viewing, will be providing the images live from their website, along with a discussion about the asteroid and its possible value to space prospectors. 'It's always fun when an asteroid whooshes past our world so the Slooh telescopes will be watching live when asteroid 2011 UW-158 passes 30 times closer to us than the nearest planet, on July 19.’ Slooh Astronomer Bob Berman said.
'What makes this unusual is the large amount of platinum believed to be lurking in the body of this space visitor.
‘Can it be mined someday, perhaps not too far in the future?'
Planetary Resources considers asteroids like 2011 UW-158 as ‘X-type’ asteroids.
X-type asteroids are composed primarily of metal, and appear to be the remnants of large asteroids that fully separated into core and mantle.
Many of these were destroyed in huge collisions in the solar system’s early history, leaving just their tough metallic cores.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Get the butterfly net...
Space Ping!.....................
Pff, it will go right through the net. What we need is a giant catcher’s mitt about the size of Long Island...
I hate to be a nit-picker but does anyone have any idea what 100 million tons of new acquired platinum reserves would do to the PRICE of platinum? Anyone, anyone? Would the combined value of the asteroid still be $5.4 million? Bueller?
That word BELIEVED.... that's an important part of this statement. All it takes is one time for some company to spend 500 million dollars capturing one of these things and getting $2,700 dollars worth of precious metals ..... to make these dreams seem less inviting.
Where’s the beef?
If there was suddenly 100 million tons of platinum wouldn’t its price go down to to the level of steel or aluminum? It certainly wouldn’t be precious if it was in abundance.
I was thinking the same thing. Platinum is valuable because it is rare. introduce a couple thousand tons and the price goes down, Introduce 100 million tons and it will be 10 cents a pound.
I’m selling it on eBay for the bargain price of only $200 million. Limit one per customer.
They’d be making dust pans out of it....
“What do you mean, Si isn’t silver!”
I believe so, yes...............
Shipping not included....................Paypal welcome....................
Yep. Supply goes up, demand doesn’t change, price goes down.............
But, if we don’t get it first, we’ll have a platinum gap with the Russkis and then where will we be?
Its only worth $3 Trillion because we can’t get it.
If we COULD, then it would flood the market!
Because SPACE platinum!
You know that would work somewhere, like QVC overnight infomercials--they'll get Mike Rowe back to plug it...
Heh.
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