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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: 2) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:14AM

    by penguinoid (5331) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:14AM (#211799)

    If we had a working asteroid detection/Earth defense system, we might have been able to nudge it to a specific landing spot while testing the system, for very little energy. Much of the platinum would be lost on entry, but it would still be a large amount.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM (#211815)

    And it would probably wipe out a good chunk of life as we know it. Land it on land and it blocks the sun for a while. Land in the ocean and you get massive waves. Something that big traveling that fast is not something you want to hit the earth.

    • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM

      by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM (#211827) Journal
      Nudging it to impact the moon would probably be a better bet - no one is living there, and it's possible to set up a mine on the surface to extract the ore dumped by the asteroid. There have been plans for magnetic launchers to send stuff back from the moon for decades, but no one has built one because there's nothing on the moon that's sufficiently valuable to cover the cost.
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      • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:25AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:25AM (#211835) Journal

        Nudging it to impact the moon

        Yes, good idea. Unless it knocks the moon out of its tidally locked orbit, and we lose the tides and also our orbital stability and begin crashing towards the sun! See what your greed has done? It's a goddamned paradox, Louise!

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:05PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:05PM (#211914) Journal

        Send chunks of it into Earth's atmosphere that are too small to do real damage? Land them someplace sparsely inhabited like the Sahara?

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