This column is supposed to be centered around the Earth, but I’m going to take us into space for a little bit. During my pre-college summer course at Brown, surrounding geology, I learned about a rock that was worth 10 thousand quadrillion dollars. Well,… while it technically is a rock, Asteroid 16 Psyche is thought to be the core of a failed planet. I think exploring the core of a failed planet is fascinating enough already, but that’s not the key attraction of this floating entity. The reason we want to explore this planet core is because it might be composed of elements like iron, nickel, and gold.
“Wait, Malik. I didn’t know that other planets had the same elements as ours ?” you might ask. Yeah I know. What’s really interesting is that all of the planets in our solar system are made of the same materials. During the formation of the solar system there was a point where everything was just tiny particles flying around. As these particles began to clump together, they eventually got to the point where the largest rocks would pull in all of the smaller rocks. This is a widely accepted theory of how the planets in the solar system were formed.
That’s where Asteroid 16 Psyche core comes into play. The potential materials we will find on it are worth so much because they are materials we will need to progress into the future. But, something about 16 Psyche left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. If you think about it, people are trying to go into space to get materials that are becoming scarce on earth. I believe this is terrifying. It says to me that we not only have given up on harvesting materials closer to the center of the earth, but it says we are moving away fast. As we continue to ravage our planet for resources, scarcity of certain materials has begun to creep into our minds. Heavier metals are found closer to the core of the earth and have a smaller abundance in the places where we can actually find them. This means that eventually we will not be able to harvest metals like iron, nickel, and gold. Therefore we are exploring new options to harvest the materials needed and one of them is called ocean mining. Ocean mining allows us to obtain metals like cobalt and manganese (often used as the base of batteries of renewable energy sources) at the deepest levels of the ocean. The problem with this though, is it would completely destroy the ecosystem surrounding it because of the way we would need to harvest. That’s why it seems like space is our next option to harvest materials.
The idea that we are already developing the technology to obtain parts of this planet core, tells me that we have been anticipating something like this happening for a long time now. Outside of this specific planet core, I also began thinking about new sustainable energy sources. In order to build solar panels and wind turbines, we increasingly need heavy metals and even more rare minerals. So what will happen? I think it’s very possible that we could get stuck before we have an opportunity to change anything. Why? Well, we keep building cars, planes, buses, and factories that are requiring heavy metals for their construction and are constantly putting negative things into the air. By the time that we truly begin to focus on sustainability, I think that we will find that the materials we have been wasting on fossil fuel powered technology are not vast enough for the production of renewable energy sources. If anything, renewable energy products require materials that are more rare and difficult to get. I feel like we are setting ourselves up for failure on our current track.
I think that explains why the asteroid’s core is so valuable. It would provide the richest people in the world with an incentive to obtain more money and materials. It would inspire a galactic race, with the winner taking all. The single person or organization that obtains the materials on this rock, would have the power to manipulate companies all around the world. If we look across our short modern history, humans are always competing to patent the next best thing so that they can monopolize the market. So, it makes sense that these billionaires who are funding these space missions would be greedy. I think that the group who obtains the materials on this rock would become too influential for the current world that we live in. They would have a primary role in the construction of future technology as well as the political framework of the Earth.
Even though this may seem like a reach, I definitely have seen bigger surprises over the past couple years of my life. Our generation might not be the victims of a complete loss of resources and a race to find materials, but one day this may be someone’s reality.
