# Expensive asteroid found **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 1, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482 "2020-11-01T14:46:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/21 "2020-11-01T21:52:04Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > That barely addresses, much less contradicts what I said. Why don’t you try clicking on a few of them and look at the sizes? Hint: they are bigger than refrigerators or small buildings. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/22 "2020-11-01T21:56:08Z")
Ah, so you were not responding to what I said when I said that there were tens of thousands of rocks of that composition that were of small size and you were just making a non-sequitur. I was responding to your point of psyche not being any more valuable than “hundreds of thousands” of rocks of similar composition. What were you responding to? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/23 "2020-11-01T22:07:03Z")
To your incorrect assertion that all other metallic asteroids are tiny compared to Psyche (refrigerators to small buildings–there are multiples more than 100 km across, more more than 10 km across) and your seeming to imply that Psyche is unique in being a protoplanet core [when we have on Earth samples of up to 120 different cores](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/iron-meteorite). ---
**Author:** ![Kimera757](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimera757/32/3765_2.png) [@Kimera757](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimera757)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/24 "2020-11-01T22:07:39Z")
Canada has some interesting tax rules on foreign-derived income 😀 Despite its size, the expense would be huge. Like offshore drilling or fracking, but several orders of magnitude more expensive. This finding will launch a thousand near-future sci-fi novels. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/25 "2020-11-01T22:13:01Z")
Ah, that was not an assertion that I made. Not even close. I was responding to your assertion that there are hundreds of thousands of other asteroids that are as valuable. Out of those hundreds of thousands that _you_ referred to, most of them are not metallic, and most of them are quite tiny in comparison. You are pretty much only arguing against yourself here. I’m done. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/26 "2020-11-01T23:57:50Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > We could save quite a bit of electricity if long distance transmission lines were made of platinum Platinum is useful for a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. It’s a much, much [worse](http://eddy-current.com/conductivity-of-metals-sorted-by-resistivity/) electrical conductor than Aluminum, which is why Aluminum is used for transmission lines (also it’s conductivity to weight to cost ratios). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/27 "2020-11-02T00:18:58Z")
Silver is the best conductor among the elements, followed closely by copper. You’d need a heck of a lot of platinum (or anything else) to displace copper as the practical conductor of choice. And any asteroid that has that much platinum probably also has even more copper. Oh, and before anyone mentions satellite phones as a use for iridium, the metal itself isn’t involved at all in the iridium satellites. They’re just named that because there were originally 77 satellites, and someone thought that that made the system resemble an atom with 77 electrons. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/28 "2020-11-02T02:06:37Z")
And I clearly said “per unit volume.” Since it seems that I need to break that down into smaller words for you, that means that is a big lump of the stuff, but there are lots and lots and lots and lots of lumps of the same stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/29 "2020-11-02T03:03:49Z")
I’m wondering that–if asteroid mining ever happened–it might be easier to get iron/nickel from S-type asteroids. There is a smaller percentage of metal, but crushing rock for the blobs of pure metal might be easier than cutting it from M-type asteroids. Here are a few old photos of meteorites in my collection. The shiny/silvery areas are elemental nickel-iron. (Including a few [armored chondrules](https://www.meteorite-times.com/armored-chondrules/).) [[Album] imgur.com ![](https://i.imgur.com/P3SEKu4.jpeg?fb "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/a/SoicNUr) ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/30 "2020-11-02T03:04:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Silver is the best conductor among the elements, followed closely by copper. [The Manhattan Project famously borrowed 14,000 _tons_ of silver from the U.S. Treasury](https://www.americanscientist.org/article/from-treasury-vault-to-the-manhattan-project) to make coils for the electromagnets in the calutrons used to separate uranium isotopes. (That way copper could be reserved for other vital wartime uses.) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/31 "2020-11-02T05:13:47Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > There are thousands or tens of thousands of asteroids that are likely the same composition more or less, but they are going to be sized from refrigerators to small buildings. This one is hundreds of miles. If we towed it back to earth and parked it conveniently, say, at the bottom of an ocean, how much would it raise the sea level? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/32 "2020-11-02T05:20:34Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > If we towed it back to earth and parked it conveniently, say, at the bottom of an ocean, how much would it raise the sea level? Pretty high. It would convert the oceans to superheated steam. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/33 "2020-11-02T14:10:50Z")
Bravo **Darren**! If we magically lowered it gently into the water to avoid that unfortunate side effect the answer is roughly 8 meters. The volume of 16 Psyche is roughly 4M km3. For comparison the volume of the Greenland ice sheet is very roughly 3M km3. Which if melted would raise sea levels ~6m. As sea levels go up, the lateral boundaries of the ocean spread out. So the ~33% greater volume of Psyche vs the ice sheet should produce something less than a 33% larger increase in sea level. I WAG 25%. So 7-8m. Enough to be enormously disruptive to modern society. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/34 "2020-11-02T14:15:44Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > 4M km3 nitpick: In light of that current discussion in GQ about order of ops, we gotta clearly distinguish between (km)3 vs. k(m3). ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/35 "2020-11-02T14:21:01Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > It’s a much, much [worse](http://eddy-current.com/conductivity-of-metals-sorted-by-resistivity/) electrical conductor than Aluminum, which is why Aluminum is used for transmission lines (also it’s conductivity to weight to cost ratios). Good to know. I knew it was used in high end electronics, assumed that meant is was a good conductor. I guess it’s more its mechanical and chemical properties that are useful for electrodes. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > And I clearly said “per unit volume.” Since it seems that I need to break that down into smaller words for you, that means that is a big lump of the stuff, but there are lots and lots and lots and lots of lumps of the same stuff. You still have not responded to what I have actually said, just to what you want me to have said so that you would have something to argue against. I really don’t get it, and this is stupid. There is no straw in space. > [@Chronos](#): > > Silver is the best conductor among the elements, followed closely by copper. You’d need a heck of a lot of platinum (or anything else) to displace copper as the practical conductor of choice. It may find use in superconductors. > **[Could Platinum Be the Next Superconductor?](https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/could-platinum-be-the-next-superconductor/)** > > The platinum group metals (PGMs) are a family of six structurally and chemically similar elements that include platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), Rhodium (Rh), Iridium (Ir), Ruthenium (Ru), and Osmium (Os). Platinum jewelry may be the most well-known... ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/36 "2020-11-02T14:24:13Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > You still have not responded to what I have actually said, I thought you were done? What you actually said was a Cliff Claven scale pile of bloviating misinformation. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/37 "2020-11-02T14:35:07Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > nitpick: In light of that current discussion in GQ about order of ops, we gotta clearly distinguish between (km)3 vs. k(m3). Zing!! 😉 And the big M is itself an implied multiplier. (Mkm)3 are very large units indeed. 4 of those is 4E27 cubic meters is a cube roughly 1.7 lightyears on a side or a sphere roughly 1 LY in radius = 2 LY in diameter. Now _that_ would make a splash in Earth’s puddles. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/38 "2020-11-02T14:38:16Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > If we magically lowered it gently into the water to avoid that unfortunate side effect the answer is roughly 8 meters. You are assuming that it would pancake to the ocean floor? Because if it remained intact, only a small percentage would be submerged n the ocean, with the large majority towering out all the way to LEO. Of course, even if it were to be magically lowered, it would still cause the oceanic plate it was sitting on to sink–and possibly punch right through it and sink to the core. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/39 "2020-11-02T14:55:24Z")
Yeah, I totally skipped that part. Partly oversight, partly for brevity. Clearly given geologic time it would sink into the Earth’s core. After all … that’s what the original core did. It’d also bring an awful lot of cooling with it. Probably enough, a la Venus, to stop Earth’s core dynamo & destroy our magnetic field, followed many millennia later by the destruction of our atmosphere. Actually I wonder if it wouldn’t be much faster than that, like mere minutes to at least make a big dent in the crust. Obviously the Earth is rotating. If we gave Psyche the appropriate angular momentum and just set it gently in the rough center of the floor of the Pacific at, say, 0N180W then what happens next? For round numbers the Earth out-masses Psyche by 200,000x. So that much mass sitting more or less as a point more or less on the surface will induce some wobble, but not something instantly catastrophic like if we set the Moon or Mars in the same spot. But it will cause instant massive structural overload of the crust at the small contact patch at the base of Psyche. I’m going to (total mongo-WAG) that it sinks maybe 20-30% of its diameter into the mantle in a matter of hours at most. The resulting insanely powerful earthquakes will destroy everything on the surface and whip the oceans into a froth. In all this seems like a bad idea. Here are two other competingly bad ideas: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/) [https://what-if.xkcd.com/35/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/35/) ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482/40 "2020-11-02T15:26:15Z")
I was trying to relate the size of this asteroid to an island, based on the Wikipedia estimate of its volume of 5.8×10^6 cubic kilometers. So assuming the same volume but 12,000 feet high (average ocean depth, according to a Google search), you’d end up with an island roughly the size of Oahu. (Assuming my math is correct.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-asteroid-found/924482.md?page=3)