VLADIMIR DUTHIERS:
00:01:00
Wow! All right, let me talk about what Sotheby's is saying about the treasure that this rock actually is. Listen to what the vice chairman had to say about this find. It's incredible that it made it through, and then that it crashed in the middle of the desert instead of the middle of the ocean in a place where we could find it, and that somebody who could recognize what it was found it. So there's a whole kind of process or a layer of things that have to happen in order for this to become reality. So Derrick, just elaborate on how rare this Mars rock is and how astronomy research-- how it helps astronomy research here on Earth. So what makes this really rare is the fact that it was blasted off of Mars through an asteroid impact on Mars. And in fact, the impactor itself was large enough to blast a piece of Martian crust 54 pounds in size up into space off the planet into an orbit around the sun, in which it eventually intersected with the Earth's orbit and crashed on Earth. Now, it's a relatively rare find, actually, but the size of this is really incredible. And that's really great, because it means that this is a piece that can be studied by scientists really easily. It helps to tell us something about the Martian surface itself, and about the bombardments that have happened on Mars. And then it comes all the way to Earth and becomes this rare object that we have here. There are only 77,000 authenticated asteroid-- meteorites on Earth anyway. And of those, a very small number are Martian. And this one is the largest one of them. So it's a really great piece to have.
VLADIMIR DUTHIERS:
00:02:51
Yeah, I just kind of wonder who buys these. Who's going to buy this rock? But a great, great cocktail discussion piece. You come into somebody's house. They're like, look at this rock. It's my pet rock, but this one's from Mars. Derrick, always good to have you, my friend. Who can say, I've got one of these. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Vlad. There's a lot of things you could have, but only one person can have this one thing. All right, Derrick, thank you. Wish it was me. Yeah, right.
