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Asteroid UW-158 is set to wizz past Earth today, carrying an estimated five trillion dollars in platinum.
Spectroscopic analysis has revealed the composition of the asteroid, and made it a prime target for future asteroid-mining missions. It is approximately 452 metres by 1,011 metres in size. If the analysis is correct, it could be carrying an astonishing 90 million tons of platinum. It will swing past Earth at a distance of 2.4 million km, and will not be visible to the naked eye.
Paging Bruce Willis...
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Platinum Asteroid Worth Trillions Of Dollars Flies Past Earth
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:40AM
"it could be carrying an astonishing 90 million tons of platinum"
It isn't carrying the stuff - it IS the stuff!
That reminds me of a story. An Apache old enough to be my dad told this one to me - maybe it's politically correct? Anyway, old Indian is out scouting for the cavalry. He tells the lieutenant to go down river a ways, and cross the river when he see the Indian sex stones. The scout will meet him on the other side of the river around sundown. Lieutenant gets all tangled up, searching for Indian sex stones. The scout finds the tired troopers after sundown, camping on the wrong side of the river, and to far downstream. The scout asks what happened, the lieutenant explains he never found any "sex stones", so he didn't cross the river. The scout asks the lieutenant to follow him upstream. There's that pile of rocks. Lieutenant asks, "What makes those sex stones?" Scout picks one up, examines it closely, and says, "It's just another fucking rock" and throws it in the water.
There will be a lot of Indian sex stones up there . . .
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:22AM
No, it's carrying the stuff. It's not like the asteroid is a solid, pure, chunk of platinum. It's an ore, just like the stuff we mine on Earth (though probably more concentrated), and would still need to be refined, and it has other stuff mixed in there too (some of which may also be valuable, but not as much.
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:47PM
Platinum on Earth tends to be found with copper, nickel and iron*. While not as valuable, those could be useful for other applications in space. You can't build a space station out of just platinum, after all.
*I have absolutely no idea if that is the case in space.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum