Saturday, August 2, 2025

Largest piece of Mars on Earth up for public sale

A Martian meteorite, weighing 54.388 lbs. (24.67 kg), said to be the largest piece of Mars on Earth, estimated at  - 4 million, is displayed at Sotheby's, in New York, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, part of their Geek Week auction, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)Largest piece of Mars on Earth up for public sale

A Martian meteorite, weighing 54.388 lbs. (24.67 kg), mentioned to be the biggest piece of Mars on Earth, estimated at $2 – 4 million, is displayed at Sotheby’s, in New York, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, a part of their Geek Week public sale, July 16, 2025. (AP Picture/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK — On the market: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock with an estimated public sale worth of $2 million to $4 million.

Why so costly? It’s the biggest piece of Mars ever discovered on Earth.

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Sotheby’s in New York shall be auctioning on Wednesday what’s generally known as NWA 16788 as a part of its Geek Week 2025, a pure history-themed sale that additionally contains different meteorites, fossils like a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton greater than 2 meters (6 toes) tall and practically 3 meters (11 toes) lengthy, and different gem-quality supplies.

Sotheby’s mentioned the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the floor of Mars by an enormous asteroid strike earlier than touring 225 million kilometers (140 million miles) to Earth, the place it crashed into the Sahara. A meteorite hunter discovered it in Niger in November 2023.

READ: Nationwide Museum of the Philippines receives meteorite assortment

The pink, brown and grey hunk is about 70 % bigger than the subsequent largest piece of Mars on Earth and represents practically 7 % of all of the Martian materials on this planet. It measures practically 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).

Uncommon discover

It is usually a uncommon discover. There are solely 400 Martian meteorites out of the greater than 77,000 formally acknowledged meteorites discovered on Earth, Sotheby’s mentioned.

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Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice chair for science and pure historical past, mentioned in an interview {that a} small piece of the meteorite was eliminated and despatched to a specialised lab that confirmed it was from Mars. It was in contrast with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites found through the Viking area probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she added.

The examination discovered that it’s an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a sort of Martian rock fashioned from the gradual cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and incorporates the minerals pyroxene and olivine.

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It additionally has a glassy floor, doubtless because of the excessive warmth that burned it when it fell by Earth’s ambiance. “In order that was their first clue that this wasn’t just a few huge rock on the bottom,” Hatton mentioned.

It’s not clear precisely when the meteorite hit Earth, however testing exhibits it in all probability occurred in recent times. —AP



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