00:04If I ask you what was the most expensive material known to man, you might say something like
00:08diamonds. But that's not the most costly, not by a staggering long shot, and especially not
00:14to scientists. Often the most precious materials come from space, for instance the rock and
00:18mineral samples that were recently brought back from the asteroid Bennu. That mission's total
00:22expenditure is expected to pass 1.16 billion dollars, and they only brought back 9 ounces
00:28of asteroid samples. According to Professor of Astronomy Chris Impey, that brings the total
00:32to 132 million dollars per ounce, or roughly 70,000 times the price of gold. That's not
00:39even close to the most expensive material known to humankind. The astronomy professor explains
00:44that the most costly material is antimatter. Antimatter occurs naturally, but only exists
00:49for fleeting moments, as antiparticles quickly meet particles and turn into radiation. However,
00:54particle accelerators can produce it. But if you want to create a single ounce of them,
00:58it would take billions of years. Meaning one ounce would require the machine to be on for
01:02that time, at a cost, of around a billion billion dollars.
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