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Metstone, the largest known Mars on Earth, is expected to win up to $4 million when it goes to auction later this month.
Known as NWA 16788, the met stone weighs 54 pounds (24.5 kilograms), which tends to be small pieces compared to most Martian met stones, Auction House Sotheby’s said in a statement released Tuesday.
Metstones are those left when a comet, asteroid, or meteor survives a passing through Earth’s atmosphere.
Discovered in November 2023 in the remote Agadez region of Niger at NWA 16788, a “monologian specimen” about 70% larger than the next largest Mars ever discovered on Earth, according to Sotheby’s.
It is also very rare. Only about 400 Martian met stones have been discovered on Earth.
“NWA 16788 is an extraordinary discovery of importance. It is the largest Martian metstone discovered on Earth and the most valuable of the species offered at auction.”
“Weathered through travelling space and time, its enormous size and unmistakable red colour highlight it as a generation of discoveries. This incredible metstone provides a concrete connection with our heavenly neighbours who have long captured the human imagination,” she added.
Analysis of the internal composition of the metstone reveals that it was probably removed from the surface of Mars and exploded into space by the impact of a very powerful asteroid.
According to Sotheby’s, glass-like crust forms as well as the surface of the earth as it traverses the Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteorite will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s New York on July 16th.
For some, the fact that met stones are sold rather than donated to science is the cause of concern.
“If it disappears into the oligarch’s safe, it would be embarrassing. It belongs to a museum that can be studied there, a place that children, families and the public can enjoy, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said on Wednesday.
But it has to be a balance for Julia Cartwright, a planetary scientist and independent researcher at the Institute for Space/Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester in the UK.
“In the end, without a market for searching, collecting and selling met stones, we wouldn’t be near many of our collections. This drives science!” she told CNN on Wednesday, explaining the “symbiotic relationship” between researchers and collectors.
“If we can’t find a sample, we don’t know as much as we do because we don’t have much to study,” Cartwright added.
She believes that this “really wonderful rock” will be researched or displayed for the public to see, but Cartwright emphasized that reference samples from the met stones are preserved at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China.
Although we don’t know where the Met stones will go after auction, Cartwright said “we may still gather a lot of science as there is still scientific interest and new owners may be very interested in learning from it,” she said.
In February 2021, a Martian metstone, trapped in a planetary atmosphere, went under the hammer at Christie’s auction house.
It was sold for $200,000, well above the pre-auction estimate of $30,000-$50,000.
