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Largest piece of Mars on Earth fetches $5.3M at auction
- Sophia95 1y ago[flagged]
- cbsks 1y agoIt’d be funny if he bought it then returned it to Mars.
- Torwald 1y agoThat would make it even more valuable.
- fitsumbelay 1y agoGott in Himmel, to whom? Who on Earth is in the set of peeps who's both wealthy enough to do so and lives in awe of Musk? Wouldn't such fool and said fool's money have been parted long ago?
- mongol 1y agoHow do we know that piece of rock originates on Mars?
- ceejayoz 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite > These meteorites are interpreted as Martian because they have elemental and isotopic compositions that are similar to rocks and atmospheric gases on Mars, which have been measured by orbiting spacecraft, surface landers and rovers.
- colechristensen 1y agoThey were a lot different than other meteorites. Isotope ratios are used to date when the rock solidified and they were found to be younger. Different isotope ratios which are unique and prevalent across different planets were found to be the same as on Mars. Basically there was a rare set of clustered properties which were very similar to properties of the rocks and atmosphere on mars as tested by our various landers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
- treyd 1y agoA linked article states > The examination found that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says. And that magma is probably identified by isotopic composition. Similar to how we know that the Moon used to be part of Earth.
- fitsumbelay 1y agoIMHO having "fuck you" money, as opposed to wealth, is vulnerable and emotional and therefore ripe for getting rugged, eg. You don't see Warren Buffet or even space enthusiasts like Bezos and Musk in this fray. At least not publicly. There is probably a happy middle between the two though but man I can't imagine being that rich and needy and setting off the Spidey-sense of every scammer within miles of you. Seriously? "Meteor" hunter? Come on, man ...
- JKCalhoun 1y agoBillionaires are wild. Bones of a T-Rex and now extra-planetary artifacts. Apparently it's a bragging-rights club? It's easy to sit on the sidelines and talk about how, if we were a billionaire, we would use our money to try to improve the planet and the people and animals on it. But I'd still like to think though that I would do exactly that.
- lostmsu 1y agoDamn, I believe I just saw the bones you are referring to today from lake Washington.
- selectodude 1y agoThat’s the beauty of being a multi-billionaire. You can do both. I can sit in my office with a giant chunk of mars and try to do decent shit.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago[flagged]
- JKCalhoun 1y agoIf you put it in a philanthropic trust you don't have to proceed to step 2.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y agoEh, I have done way less ethically challenging things in my life and already consider it. Honestly, I can't imagine the amount of exploiting you'd have to do to accumulate a billion dollars. You are talking like 23,000 years of labor at median wage in the US to have a billion dollars. If you are Elon Musk, you are talking like 10 million years. If you are okay walking through the world like that, I think you have some problems.
- pxmpxm 1y ago> exploiting you'd have to do to accumulate Your grasp of economics could use some work
- chiffre01 1y agoFor the sake of price stability, let's hope larger pieces are not found.
- fsckboy 1y agoprices are more stable when there is a liquid market
- isoprophlex 1y agoWe saw and touched a smaller, metallic meteorite fragment last year in a museum. Touching it was an incredible experience. It had a very noticable, distinct smell. I couldnt get enough of running my fingers along the cold, pitted surface of it. One of my kids still sometimes snickers and offhandedly comments "this metal was once a star" when he sees or handles solid metallic objects. I'd definitely try to buy something like this if I had "fuck you" amounts of money
- ljlolel 1y ago> “this metal was once a star” So are you…
- isoprophlex 1y agoHaha yes, but now they get to feel special for identifying especially cool bits of star.
- plasticchris 1y agoSeems like you would need a pretty hot part of a star to fuse helium into metal
- ljlolel 1y agoYou are an ESPECIALLY cool bit!
- Avalaxy 1y ago> It had a very noticable, distinct smell. The smell of people's hands touching it repeatedly?
- ElevenLathe 1y agoMakes me wonder if this is a potential funding stream for private Mars missions: Bring back a load of rocks, auction them off on Sotheby's. What would be the optimal amount to bring back to make a profit (or at least offset some of the costs) without tanking the price?
- indoordin0saur 1y agoEven without tanking the price something tells me there's not a huge market for mars rocks.
- autoexec 1y agoThat can always be manufactured with enough money thrown into advertising. You can even make claims like how the rocks cure cancer and give people better erections if you're careful to do it in ways that can't be directly linked back to you.
- indoordin0saur 1y agoHmmm.... good idea. PM me. I think we'd be successful business partners.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- proteal 1y agoIf you are a monopoly producer (which seems fair in this context) you would set the price of the rocks where your marginal revenue equals your marginal demand. Loosely, you’d do a market survey to see what price the market would be willing to pay for a mars rock[0], then figure out your cost structure for bringing back one more kilo of rocks. You’d factor in cost to launch a rocket, fuel for the rocket, astronaut salaries, and don’t forget terrestrial costs like marketing and distribution! If you did a good enough job at predicting supply and demand, you wouldn’t actually care what the price of the product is because you would have claimed all the consumer surplus for yourself :) To specifically answer the optimal quantity question, the above answer implies that you would keep bringing rocks home until the cost to bring them back is higher than the price you set. To be clear, you could still go out and get more rocks and sell them for less and still make a profit, but you wouldn’t maximize your profit with that strategy. Competitive markets nudge behavior towards providing more product for less profit/cost which is why we love competition. [0] Planet money did a great podcast on how to actually do this. Here’s a link to a transcript (though listening is probably best): https://podscripts.co/podcasts/planet-money/how-much-for-that-egg https://podscripts.co/podcasts/planet-money/how-much-for-tha...
- deadbabe 1y agoThe rock will now be broken up and pieces of it will be used for expensive Mars edition watches, creating a greater return on this $5.3 million investment. Imagine a piece of mars right on your wrist.
- FrojoS 1y agoI sure hope you are wrong. It's not in the article.