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Platinum Asteroid Worth Trillions Of Dollars Flies Past Earth

posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the waving-money-goodbye dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:18AM

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:18AM (#211735) Journal

    If 90 million tons of platinum was added to the world market,

    Worldwide platinum reserves (almost entirely in South Africa) are 66,000 tons. Mining just 0.1% of that asteroid would more than double the reserves. As supply goes up, price comes down. Demand may increase as the price comes down, but would it double? Would it increase 20-fold? If that asteroid landed on the market, the supply would increase 1500 times. Your 1mm deep catalytic converter in 10% of the cars in the world could become 1cm deep in every car in the world, and it wouldn't even make a dent.

    The cost of mining the platinum is irrelevant if we accept it's worth something. Lets assume platinum prices would drop 1,000 times if supply increases by 1500 times, so it would be $31 per kilo rather than $31k per kilo. The asteroid would be worth $5 billion rather than $5 trillion.

    What applications could cheap platinum produce? Are new widespread products likely to come on the market if price dropped to $10k/kilo, $1k/kilo, or $100 per kilo?

    The cost of mining is irrelevant until the actual value of that much platinum is calculated.

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  • (Score: 2) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:00AM

    by penguinoid (5331) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:00AM (#211793)

    That's just ridiculous. Sure, that much platinum would alter the price but not by that much. First of all, the asteroid is likely to be controlled by a single entity, and they'll simply hoard most of it DeBeers style. Secondly, even if it flooded the market I doubt it would fall below the price of gold.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:11AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:11AM (#211824) Journal
    The more interesting question is what it would do to technology. Platinum is a really useful catalyst, but only used in tiny quantities because of the cost (and avoided where possible for the same reason). Gold would also be interesting: it's a good electrical conductor and doesn't corrode on contact with oxygen - if it suddenly became a lot cheaper than copper then things would be very interesting. It would also likely end up being used for things like building cladding (gold plate your corrugated iron and it won't rust!).
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    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:15PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:15PM (#211959) Homepage Journal

      This is what crossed my mind. Pt is rare, however it is quite useful in industry.

      The example I'm most familiar with is platinum loading as a catalyst in fuel cells. There are a handful of major hurdles to overcome for fuel cell vehicles, and the loading (high cost) is a major one. A collapse in price of platinum could help enable this technology.

      Off topic: the other major hurdles in my opinion are 1. lack of hydrogen refueling infrastructure (biggest issue) 2. cost of hydrogen, particularly renewable based 3. lack of maturity for electric drive trains