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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: 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