Biggest Piece Of Mars On Earth At Sotheby's

Space.com

Space.com editor-in-chief Tariq Malik gives you a peek at the biggest piece of Mars discovered on Earth. Currently on display at Sotheby's in New York City.   Credit: Space.com | edited by Steve Spaleta

Transcript

00:00Hey Space fans, it's Tarek Malik, Editor-in-Chief of Space.com, and I'm here at Sotheby's, New York,

00:05where they have, apparently, the world's largest meteorite from Mars, and I want to check it out.

00:13So, we're going to come here. They think it's going to sell for millions. Let's go see it.

00:17All right, here we are. We're on the third floor of Sotheby's. This is apparently, look,

00:22there's space exploration over there. That's so cool. All right, we're going to come see the

00:26meteorite. It's right over here. Look at all these gems. Wow, very nice. Oh, here it is.

00:37It's the largest piece of Mars on Earth. Wow. It's absolutely enormous. So, this here, this is NWA

00:5116788. It's the largest piece of Mars on Earth that we've ever, I guess, found. It seems it was

00:59discovered in November of 2023 by a meteorite hunter in Niger's remote, I think I'm going to pronounce

01:07this right, Agadez region. And it's about 54 pounds, just over that, actually. 54 pounds,

01:13point, well, 54.39 pounds. And that makes it about 70 percent larger than the next biggest piece of

01:22Mars on the planet. In fact, over here, you can see how it stacks up. Okay, so here, here are the ones

01:28that are being sold by Sotheby's. This is, I guess, all the meteorites that they've sold. There's this

01:32tiny one, Zagami, which is just a partial piece. Then you have Tessent. Tessent is a very famous

01:37meteorite. Then a complete slice in 2021. Then all of these ones are apparently being sold. Some of

01:45them in July. They're getting bigger. You can see this 14269 is 0.45, so about half a pound. Then you

01:52have a full pound right here. So, yeah, double two, one pound. Okay, that's an N piece. Another one

01:59pounder. All right, getting up there, getting up there. And then right here, these are all of the

02:07meteorites that Sotheby's have sold from Mars over time. But this is the biggest. Right there.

02:17Pretty slick, right? Look, it's got the reflections on it. Hey, you can see me. Hey, can you see me?

02:23Hey. Now, of like the 77,000 meteorites that we have found over the ages, only 400 or so are actually

02:34confirmed to be from Mars. And the way that it gets here is that you can see here's Mars, right over

02:39here. Basically, my fist is an asteroid. It smacks right into Mars. Kapow. A bunch of ejecta comes out.

02:45It comes all the way. And then it just re-enters and it reaches Earth, which is like what? I mean,

02:50millions of miles. That must have taken it forever to get here. One of the reasons that scientists get

02:56very excited for meteorites like this is because they give us an up-close and personal look

03:01at what the surface of Mars actually is like. In fact, what the subsurface would be, because this

03:06could come from deep within the planet, you know, hundreds of feet down, if not from that impact

03:11itself. What Sotheby's says is that there is a very clear, like, parts that are glassy fusion crust that

03:18appear that have been seared into its surface, you know, when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

03:23And then it ultimately made its resting place in the Sahara Desert, which is pretty slick.

03:29I have never seen a Mars meteorite, I think, in person. Just pictures of them. And this is by far.

03:36I mean, like, here's my fist for comparison. It's like enormous. You can see that, right?

03:42Look, I can almost touch Mars. Look. Boop, boop. I booped it. You can't touch it because clearly

03:49it's a pristine sample. But that is spectacular. Now, Sotheby's thinks that this is going to go for

03:57somewhere between two to four million dollars when it gets sold. And hopefully it'll get on public

04:02display somewhere else, maybe like a museum or something like that. But, you know, wherever it

04:06ends up landing again after Niger, hopefully it finds someone that can clearly appreciate it.

04:19So, let's take a look.

04:27So, let's take a look.

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