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Business Insider
a day ago
- Science
- Business Insider
The $5.3 million sale of a precious rock from Mars belonging to Niger spurs outrage
A rare Martian meteorite unearthed in Niger sold for a whopping $5.3 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York, prompting outrage from scientists and cultural heritage defenders who are now seeking answers and its return. A Martian meteorite weighing 24.6 kilograms and discovered in Niger was auctioned for $5.3 million at Sotheby's New York. The meteorite, known as NWA 16788, is the largest Martian rock ever found on Earth, estimated to have traveled 140 million miles. Concerns were raised about the legality and ethical implications of exporting this significant artifact from Niger. In November 2023, a meteorite hunter discovered NWA 16788 in the Agadez area of northern Niger. It weighs more than 24.6 kilograms (54 pounds) and is the biggest Martian rock ever recovered on Earth, according to Sotheby's. Experts estimate it traveled 140 million miles from Mars' surface, likely dislodged by an ancient asteroid impact, before landing in the Sahara sands. The auction started at $1.9 million and quickly jumped to $4.3 million, with premiums and fees bringing the total to $5.3 million. However, Sotheby's has not revealed the identity of either the buyer or the seller, heightening speculation over how such an important alien item departed its nation of origin. The auction took place during the auction house's "Geek Week," which features goods related to natural history, science, and space. A private gallery in Tuscany, Italy, and the Italian Space Agency had both previously exhibited the rock. Conversation on meteorites in Africa The specimen's provenance remains a matter of debate, however, as reported by Forbes. 'The NWA 16788 meteorite was shipped and transported in line with the standard procedure of all meteorites that come out of Niger. As with everything we sell, all relevant documentation was in order at each stage of its journey,' Sotheby's tells Forbes Africa. According to Giovanni Pratesi, a professor at the University of Florence in Italy and one of the authors of two of the three papers referenced in the Sotheby's catalogue, he was 'only involved in the characterization and study of this specimen (NWA 16788), without having received, for a while, any information about provenance.' 'In fact, the place of recovery of the meteorites is not so important for science because their real provenance, of course, is not the Earth but other bodies of the Solar System,' Pratesi says. 'Anyway, there is no doubt that the Sahara represents a very important reservoir of extraterrestrial material. 'A confirmation of this is given by the high number of meteorite specimens bearing the name NWA (North West Africa) that is used when the exact place of recovery is not known. In this respect, I believe that African countries should organize a network to recover and valorize these meteorites.' The sale has reignited concerns about the unregulated trade of meteorites, particularly those discovered in developing countries. Nigerien officials and international cultural watchdogs are now questioning the legality and ethics of the meteorite's export, with many demanding its immediate return. 'It was discovered in Niger? How come it ended up being sold in New York?' says Alia Baré, a fashion designer and daughter of former Nigerien president Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, to Forbes Africa. 'It is a crucial matter of sovereignty… This is a national treasure that shouldn't have been sold. Things have to change,' she added.
USA Today
6 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
A Mars rock was expected to sell at auction for $4 million. The final bid was for more
The final price tag, which came after various fees and costs were added, is the most any meteorite of any origin has ever sold for at auction, Sotheby's said. The largest piece of Mars to ever make its way to Earth is now also the most valuable meteorite in the world. A chunk of the Martian surface that at some point crashed into Earth following an unlikely cosmic journey sold Wednesday, July 16 to an anonymous bidder for a record $5.3 million at a Sotheby's New York auction. The final price tag, which came after various fees and costs were added, is the most any meteorite of any origin has ever sold for at auction, Sotheby's said in a post on social media site X. The sale also surpasses the $2-4 million the Mars rock was expected to fetch. What is the Mars rock? The large space rock, which has the scientific name of NWA 16788, had its Martian origins validated by the Meteoritical Society, which included it in its Meteoritical Bulletin, the global journal of record for meteor-related science. The meteorite was previously on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome and at a private gallery in Arezzo, Italy, in Tuscany, before it landed in Sotheby's auction. Mars rock sells for $5.3 million: Who bought it? Marketed by Sotheby's as "the largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth," the cosmic object was expected to sell for up to $4 million. The final bid was $4.3 million. The official final sale price was then about $5.3 million after various fees and costs were added, multiple outlets reported, including the Associated Press and ABC News. Sotheby's, a British-founded auctioneer of art and collectibles based in New York City, auctioned off the meteorite, along with more than 100 other items, Wednesday, July 16. Sotheby's has not publicly identified the buyer. What are meteorites? Rocks in space are known as meteoroids. If those space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere, they become meteors that streak across the sky in events colloquially referred to as "shooting stars." Meteors – or fragments of them – that survive their atmospheric trip and land on the surface without burning up become meteorites, according to NASA. Martian meteorite is largest on Earth: How big is it? The Martian meteorite is 54 pounds, or about the weight of a standard bag of cement. Measuring nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches, the space rock is approximately 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth. In fact, it is so large that it represents approximately 6.5% of all Martian material ever found on Earth. How did Martian space rock get to Earth? NWA 16788 was discovered Nov. 16, 2023, by a meteorite hunter in Niger's remote Agadez region in the Sahara Desert. Featuring an unmistakable reddish Martian hue, NWA 16788's internal composition suggests it was blasted from the surface of Mars by a powerful asteroid strike. Intense enough to turn some of the meteorite's minerals into glass, the asteroid strike sent the rock hurtling through space, where it miraculously made it through Earth's atmosphere without burning up, Sotheby's said in an auction house video. Because the meteorite shows signs of minimal Earthly weathering, and its chemical makeup has not significantly changed, experts believe it reached our planet in recent years. On a planet mostly covered in water, discovering meteorites on land is incredibly rare. And Mars meteorites are even more elusive on Earth. Of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites, only 400 are Martian meteorites, according to Sotheby's. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
MTV Lebanon
6 days ago
- Science
- MTV Lebanon
Photo: Largest Mars Rock Ever Sells for $4.3M at Auction
The Martian rock, known as NWA 16788, weighs more than 54 pounds, is nearly 15 inches long and is 70% larger than the next biggest piece of Mars that has been recovered, according to the auction said the piece broke from the surface of Mars following a recent asteroid strike and traveled more than 140 million miles across the Solar crashed in the Sahara Desert in the Agadez region of Nigeria and was found by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, Sotheby's said."This is the largest piece of Mars on planet Earth. The odds of this getting from there to here are astronomically small," Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman of science and natural history at Sotheby's, said in a video posted online. "Remember that approximately 70% of Earth's surface is covered in water. So we're incredibly lucky that this landed on dry land instead of the middle of the ocean where we could actually find it."The original bid was $4.3 million. With fees and additional costs, the total price of the rock increases to about $5.3 million, according to the auction auction house said the reddish brown rock is "unbelievably rare" because meteorites from Mars make up just 400 of the 77,000 officially recognized meteorites. According to Sotheby's, the rock that was sold represents 6.5% of all Martian material currently on said a sample of the rock was sent to a specialized laboratory to be tested for Maskelynite glass, which is only found in determined the rock is an olivine-gabbroic shergottite, which is a relatively new type of Martian meteorite, according to an April 2024 report from researchers the U.S. and Canada. It was formed from the as magma on Mars slowly cooled, Sotheby's said, and contains materials such as olivine, which is also found in Earth's upper mantle."This isn't just a miraculous find, but a massive data set that can help us unlock the secrets of our neighbor, the red planet," Hatton to going up for auction at Sotheby's, the rock was in a public exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome during the 2024 European Researchers' Night and in a private gallery in Arezzo, unclear who the current owner is and if the Martian rock will be in a public or a private up for auction was a Ceratosaurus skeleton from the late Jurassic period, about 154 to 149 million years ago, which was sold for $26 million, and the skull of a Pachycephalosaurus from the late Cretaceous period 72 million to 66 million years ago for $1.4 auction, containing 122 items, is part of Sotheby's Geek Week, which holds sales for items related to natural history, the history of science and technology, and space the items up for sale on Thursday, the final day of Geek Week, include a first generation of Apple-1 computer from the first batch of 50 built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Largest chunk of Mars on Earth sells for $5.3 million
The 'Largest Piece of Mars on Earth' just sold at auction for about $5.3 million— $5,296,000, to be exact. Popular Science has reached out to Sotheby's for confirmation of the sale price. The 54-pound rock measures roughly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches. It was part of a Sotheby's natural history auction that also included a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton and a lunar meteorite. The meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by an asteroid. The chunk of the Red Planet then travelled 140 million miles to Earth, crashing in the Sahara desert. It was discovered by a meteorite hunter in Niger in November 2023. However, it is not completely clear when the meteorite hit Earth. Testing shows that the strike probably happened in recent years, according to Sotheby's. It previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the space rock's previous owner. The red, brown and gray rock is roughly 70 percent larger than the next biggest piece of Mars ever found here on Earth. It also makes up nearly 7 percent of all the Martian material currently on our planet, according to Sotheby's. 'There's a big, orbital donut full of battered bits of Mars, launched by cratering events, and the Earth clearly intercepts that stream all the time,' Ralph Harvey, a geochemist who studies plenary materials at Case Western University, tells Popular Science. 'There's really no substitute for 'ground truth,' and the Martian meteorites represent the only known samples from that planet.' Cassandra Hatton, the vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, told the Associated Press that this Martian meteorite was confirmed to be from the Red Planet in a specialized lab. The sample's chemical make up was compared with Martian meteorites that were discovered in 1967, when the Viking space probe landed on Mars. The official examination found that the now sold rock is an olivine-microgabbroic shergottite. This type of Martian rock was formed by the slow cooling of magma on Mars. Sotheby's says that it has a course-grained texture and the minerals pyroxene and olivine. The auction house estimates that there are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites that have been discovered on Earth. According to Harvey, recovering samples from any planetary body beyond Earth is challenging enough due to technology, science, and funding. It has only been done about a dozen times, making this material quite precious. Grabbing what we can when it falls is our best bet. 'There are a lot more rocks falling to Earth from space than most people realize; the total mass of meteoritic material is a few tens of thousands of tons per year,' says Harvey. 'From that, maybe 10-20,000 bits will actually be rocks that hit the Earth's surface. It's the equivalent of a softball-sized rock each million square kilometers, and distributed very randomly.' Solve the daily Crossword
New York Post
7 days ago
- Science
- New York Post
‘Largest piece of Mars on Earth' catches massive $5.3 million bid at NY auction
The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million. The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million. The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official bid price was about $5.3 million. Advertisement AP Two advance bids of $1.9 million and $2 million were submitted. The live bidding went slower than for many other objects that were sold, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the $200,000 to $300,000 bid intervals to $100,000 after the proposals hit $4 million. The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters). Advertisement It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says. AP 'This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,' Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby's, said in an interview before the auction. 'So it's more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.' It's not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars, but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby's says. Advertisement Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said. The examination found that it is an 'olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,' a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby's says. Advertisement It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth's atmosphere, Hatton said. 'So that was their first clue that this wasn't just some big rock on the ground,' she said. The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not disclose the owner. Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6 million, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs. The original estimate was $4 million to $6 million. Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It's more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it's ready to exhibit, Sotheby's says. The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby's says. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long. Advertisement The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company. Wednesday's auction was part of Sotheby's Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.
