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NASA wants to uncover the mystery behind the asteroid “16 Psyche.” that may contain a priceless treasure trove of minerals. “We’ve been to all the different planets, we’ve been to other asteroids. But we’ve never visited a body that has been made of entirely metal,” said Carol Polanskey, project scientist for the Psyche mission. Now NASA, led by researchers at Arizona State University, plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit 16 Psyche – an asteroid roughly the size of Massachusetts, made of iron and other precious metals. The mission’s leader estimates that the iron alone on today’s market would be worth $10,000 quadrillion.
Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
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NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @01:33PM
I get a chuckle speculating about what would happen if somebody some day is able to pull enough gold and precious metals from space to earth that they aren't valuable any more.
For copper, people stealing cables to sell for scrap value would stop.
For gold, we would start to at least gold plate every connector, if not simply replace copper with gold entirely in electronic circuits, because gold is much more corrosion-resistant (I'm not sure whether or not it's also a better conductor).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:08PM
Gold is a very good conductor but copper is a somewhat better conductor than gold for the same thickness of material. The primary advantages of gold for electronics are that it does not corrode easily, and it is more malleable and ductile.
I suspect gold wires do not break as easily as copper due to metal fatigue. So if gold was cheap you might find it used as the conductive material in thin flexible cables.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Friday January 20 2017, @03:47PM
We'd likely use silver wire for most things, it is one of the best conductors, better than copper. Gold is also a good conductor, better than aluminum but worse than copper.
Gold has the downside of being a relatively soft metal, if lined in plumbing it would wear off via erosion fairly quickly. But we might use a lot more gold alloys. Really if you get into post scarcity gold, silver, and diamonds other precious materials have some great design properties, diamonds have high thermal conductivity making them great for heat exchangers. One thing to look at is todays increasing use of Sapphire as a clear screen material, we can make them artificially lowering the price, but today we make small windows out of jewels!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:28AM
Well, it's hard to compare aluminum and copper or gold directly like that. Gold and copper beat aluminum for the same thickness, but aluminum is much less dense so it is a better conductor (even better than copper) for the same mass.
Gold is a very dense metal (about twice as dense as lead) so if you care about mass you probably would not use much of it.