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  • 3 days ago
Biggest piece of Mars discovered on Earth. Currently on display at Sotheby's in New York City.

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https://otieu.com/4/9412360

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00:00It's the largest piece of Mars on Earth. Wow, it's absolutely enormous. So this here,
00:13this is NWA 16788. It's the largest piece of Mars on Earth that we've ever, I guess,
00:21found. It seems it was discovered in November of 2023 by a meteorite hunter in Niger's remote
00:29I think I'm going to pronounce this right, Agadez region. And it's about 54 pounds, just over that
00:36actually. 54 pounds, well 54.39 pounds. And that makes it about 70% larger than the next biggest
00:46piece of Mars on the planet. In fact, over here you can see how it stacks up. Okay, so here are the
00:52ones that are being sold by Sotheby's. This is, I guess, all the meteorites that they've sold. There's
00:56this tiny one, Zagami, which is just a partial piece. Then you have Ticent. Ticent is a very
01:01famous meteorite. Then a complete slice in 2021. Then all of these ones are apparently being sold,
01:09some of them in July. They're getting bigger. You can see this 14269 is 0.45, so about half a pound.
01:16Then you have a full pound right here, Swiah, double two, one pound. Okay, that's an N piece.
01:22Another one pounder. All right, getting up there, getting up there. And then right here. These are all
01:31of the meteorites that Sotheby's have sold from Mars over time. But this is the biggest. Right there.
01:41Pretty slick, right? Look at the reflections on it. Hey, you can see me. Hey, can you see me?
01:47Hey. Now, of like the 77,000 meteorites that we have found over the ages, only 400 or so are
01:58actually confirmed to be from Mars. And the way that it gets here is that you can see here's Mars
02:03right over here. Basically, my fist is an asteroid. It smacks right into Mars. Kapow. A bunch of ejecta
02:08comes out. It comes all the way. And then it just re-enters and it reaches Earth, which is like what?
02:13I mean, millions of miles. That must have taken it forever to get here. One of the reasons that
02:20scientists get very excited for meteorites like this is because they give us an up-close and personal
02:25look at what the surface of Mars actually is like. In fact, what the subsurface would be,
02:30because this could come from deep within the planet, you know, hundreds of feet down, if not from that
02:35impact itself. What Sotheby's says is that there is a very clear, like parts that are glassy fusion
02:42crust that appear that have been seared into its surface, you know, when it re-entered the Earth's
02:47atmosphere. And then it ultimately made its resting place in the Sahara Desert, which is pretty slick.
02:54I have never seen a Mars meteorite, I think, in person. Just pictures of them. And this is by far.
03:00I mean, like, here's my fist for comparison. It's like enormous. You can see that, right?
03:06Well, look, I can almost touch Mars. Look. Boop, boop. I booped it. You can't touch it because clearly
03:14it's a pristine sample. But that is spectacular. Now, Sotheby's thinks that this is going to go for
03:21somewhere between two to four million dollars when it gets sold. And hopefully it'll get on public
03:26display somewhere else, maybe like a museum or something like that. But, you know, wherever it
03:30ends up landing again after Niger, hopefully it finds someone that can...

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