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A meteor This is the largest known piece of Mars on the ground that is expected to reach $ 4 million when it rises at an auction later this month.
The Sotheby auction house said in a statement published on Tuesday, known as NWA 16788, weighing 54 lbs (24.5 kg), which is huge compared to most Marsi meteorites, which tends to be small fragments.
Mepss are what remains when the comet, the asteroid or the meteor survives its passage through the atmosphere of the earth.
Close to the surface of the meteorite – Sotheby’s
It was discovered in November 2023 in the remote Agadiz area of Niger, NWA 16788 is a “huge sample” with about 70 % of the largest piece of Mars found on the ground, according to Southern.
It is also incredibly rare: about 400 Mars meteorites were found on the ground.
“NWA 16788 is to discover unusual importance – the largest Mars meteor that was found on the ground, and the most valuable of its kind provided at the auction,” Cassandra Hatton, Vice President of Natural Science and History at Sotheby, said in the statement.
She added, “I wandered through her journey through the place and time, its huge size and red colors that are unambiguously distinguished as a one-time permeability in the generation. This wonderful meteor has a concrete connection to the Red Planet-Skyday, which captured the human imagination for a long time.”
The internal composition analysis revealed that it may have been removed from the surface of Mars and detonated in space with the effect of the asteroid, which was somewhat very strong around parts of the meteorite into glass.
A glass shell can also be seen on its surface, and it is formed while stumbling in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to Sotheby.
Nizorit will go in the hammer in New York New York on July 16.
For some, the fact that the meteorite is sold instead of donating it to science is the cause of anxiety.
“It will be a shame to disappear in the basement of the few. He belongs to a museum, where it can be studied, and where children, families and the public can enjoy it in general,” said Steve Bruce, a professor of excavation and development at Edburg University.
But for Julia Cartraret, planetary scientist and independent research fellow at the Space Institute/College of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, England, there is a balance that must be achieved.
“Ultimately, if there is no market for search, collecting and selling meteorites, we will not have anywhere near many of our groups – this drives the flag!” CNN told Wednesday, describing a “referendum relationship” between researchers and university.
“If the samples are not found, we will not have anywhere near the study, and therefore we will not know as much as we do,” Cartraret added.
Although she believes it would be great that the “really wonderful rock” of the audience will be studied or displayed, Cartrait emphasized that a reference sample of the meteorite has been rescued at the purple mountain observatory in China.
Although we do not know where the meteor will end after the auction, Cartrait believes that “scientific attention will remain, and the new owner may be very interested in learning from him, so we can still collect a lot of science from this.”
In February 2021, Mars’s meteorite went with the planet’s atmosphere in the hammer at Christie’s auction house.
It sold for $ 200,000, which is much higher than the auction before the auction of 30,000-50,000 dollars.
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