Asteroid 16 Psyche has enough gold to provide for everyone on Earth

Do you know that Asteroid 16 Psyche or Gold Planet has enough gold to provide everyone on Earth with $93 billion worth? NASA intends to travel to this asteroid as it is composed of gold and other valuable minerals.

According to scientists, 16 Psyche orbits in the main asteroid belt between planets Mars and Jupiter. It may be the exposed metallic core of a long-extinct protoplanet. However, a protoplanet is a body of matter around the sun or star that developed into a planet.

The research scientist on 16 Psyche exploration, Lindy Elkins-Tanton estimated that the metals abroad asteroid would be worth more on Earth than the entire global economy.

The estimated value of the precious metals found in 16 Psyche at current prices is $700 quintillion or $93 billion for each person on our planet. Naturally, these metals don’t exist on Earth.

However, their exceptionally high values highlight the potential importance and excitement of Psyche’s journey for both planetary research and the emerging asteroid mining sector.

Scientist Wendy Caldwell suggested 16 Psyche has Monel composition, a metal mainly composed of nickel and copper. Apart from this, it has iron and gold compositions. Scientist Elkins-Tanton considers $100,000 quadrillion worth can only be obtained from mining iron alone from 16 Psyche.

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However, if precious metals mining from 16 Psyche and other asteroids will become possible. Those metals will not remain valuable for a long period, once people sell them in huge quantities.

If gold becomes oversupplied in the market, it will lose its rarity and become a common ornament. Because it is an economic fact prices decrease as supply increases. But it is only possible in case of humans’ access to Asteroid 16 Psyche to mine precious metals from it.

Philip Metzger is a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. He said there are no plans to mine 16 Psyche. They don’t have such technology to mine 16 Psyche. It would be expensive to dig Psyche and bring metals back to Earth even if they could.