Asteroid 16 Psyche, a metal-rich world roughly 225 kilometres wide orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, may contain extraordinary amounts of iron and nickel — enough that back-of-the-envelope estimates have put its theoretical metal value at around $10,000 quadrillion, a number so vast it dwarfs the entire global economy.

The number attached to asteroid 16 Psyche is so large that it almost stops being a number. Around $10,000 quadrillion. Ten quintillion dollars. More than the annual output of the entire world economy by orders of magnitude. That figure has followed Psyche for years because the asteroid is not an ordinary carbon-rich or stony body. [...] The post Asteroid 16 Psyche, a metal-rich world roughly 225 kilometres wide orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, may contain extraordinary amounts of iron and nick