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,
00:49this is NWA 16788. It's the largest piece of Mars on Earth that we've ever, I guess, found. It seems
00:59it was discovered in November of 2023 by a meteorite hunter in Niger's remote, I think I'm going to
01:06pronounce this 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
01:27the 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
01:38meteorite. 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
01:51you
01:52have a full pound right here. Swiah, double two, one pound. Okay, that's an end 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
02:14there. Pretty slick, right? Look, it's got the reflections on it. Hey, you can see me. Hey,
02:22can you see me? Hey. Now, of like the 77,000 meteorites that we have found over the ages,
02:32only 400 or so are actually confirmed to be from Mars. And the way that it gets here,
02:37is that you can see here's Mars right over here. Basically, my fist is an asteroid. It smacks
02:42right into Mars. Kapow. A bunch of ejecta comes out. It comes all the way. And then it just re
02:47-enters
02:47and it reaches Earth, which is like what? I mean millions of miles. That must have taken it forever
02:53to get here. One of the reasons that scientists get very excited for meteorites like this is because
02:59they give us an up-close and personal look at what the surface of Mars actually is like. In fact,
03:05what the subsurface would be, because this could come from deep within the planet, you know,
03:09hundreds of feet down, if not from that impact itself. What Sotheby's says is that there is a very
03:14clear, like parts that are glassy fusion crust that appear that have been seared into its surface,
03:21you know, when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. And then it ultimately made its resting place in the
03:26Sahara Desert, which is pretty slick. I have never seen a Mars meteorite, I think, in person. Just pictures
03:34of them. And this is by far. I mean, like here's my fist for comparison. It's like enormous. You can
03:41see
03:41that, right? Well, look, I can almost touch Mars. Look. Boop, boop. I booped it. You can't touch it
03:48because clearly it's a pristine sample. But that is spectacular. Now, Sotheby's thinks that this is
03:56going to go for somewhere between two to four million dollars when it gets sold. And hopefully
04:01it'll get on public display somewhere else, maybe like a museum or something like that. But, you know,
04:06wherever it ends up landing again after Niger, hopefully it finds someone that can clearly appreciate it.
04:13So, you know, I'm going to go for a while. I'm going to go for a while. I'm going to
04:19go for a while.
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