Extraterrestrial search of precious metals could be profoundly profitable

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - For Thursday's edition of Illustrated Economics, Howard discussed a potential source of precious metals that are out of this world, literally.

The website Visual Capitalist says if humans could get their hands on asteroids, it would be an absolute gold mine. The value of many asteroids is measured in the quintillions of dollars.

The market for Earth's annual production of raw materials rakes in about $660 billion, according to the website, which looks puny compared to asteroid money.

Asteroids can be worth so much because certain types are almost pure metal, called x-asteroids.

There's believed to be one x-asteroid near earth that apparently contains more platinum than what's been mined on earth, in all of its history.

And there are already two companies looking into the galaxy to see if there are any possible ones that could be brought to Earth.

It may likely come from the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, which has more than a million objects, of which more than 200 asteroids are over 60 miles in diameter.

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