NASA is looking at visiting an asteroid named Psyche 16, which is comprised of several different valuable metals, including gold and platinum. As a result, there have recently been many stories about just how valuable this asteroid is, with headlines like:
“Gigantic golden asteroid could make everyone on Earth a billionaire”
Well, that’d really be something.
The combined total value of all those precious metals would equal out at something like $700 quintillion.
That’s 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 (700 quintillion) dollars for 7,000,000,000 (7 billion) people, which works out to $100,000,000,000 each. Score!
Of course, even if this asteroid could be fully mined, monetary value doesn’t actually work that way. The linked article even discusses this, but not before using a spurious headline to lure you in, of course.