Featured Image Credit: Monty Rakusen / Lucas Ninno / Getty
Scientists have made a discovery that helps us understand the Earth's geological history, but it could also be worth a whopping $5,904,500,000,000,000 in total.
Discovering rare metals and minerals can be quite the profitable venture, as those discovered on Earth and even all the way up in space give the potential for a significant amount of money.
While the primary function of their discovery is often to help understand their origins, which commonly links to the origins of Earth and other similar planets, you can't help but gawk at the value proposition too.
That is very much the case when scientists discovered iron pieces within a Western Australian ore deposit, which illuminate much of Earth's geological history including how the separation of supercontinents allowed precious metals to form.
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And precious these metals are indeed, as while iron isn't as valuable as rare-Earth minerals like neodymium and gallum, it starts to stack up if you've got a big chunk of it.
The Hamersley Province, where these iron pieces were found and formed over one billion years ago, is recognized as the world's largest iron ore deposit, amassing more than 55 billion tons (50 metric gigatons) of the metal, as reported by Live Science.
Iron ore currently only trades at around $102 per metric ton, which is peanuts compared to something like nickel which sells for just under $16,000 for the same amount, but if you've got a lot of it then it doesn't really matter does it?
If the deposit were to sell all of its ore at the current price of iron then it would net a tidy $5,904,500,000,000,000, which in words breaks down to five quadrillion nine hundred four trillion five hundred billion. Not too bad, eh?
If you were to split that staggering figure between every single person on Earth then you'd be landed with a handy $735,763.
That doesn't quite compare to the $1,246,105,919 that everyone would be entitled to if NASA are able to capture a metal-rich asteroid floating beyond Mars, but it's a bit more realistic.
Of course, mining all of this iron would take a significant amount of time, and it's needed for far more than just it's monetary value, but it certainly makes you think about how much things that are natural to the Earth can be worth.
The discovery itself is fascinating enough though, as it has unveiled so much that scientists were previously unaware of regarding the separation of supercontinents.
We'd all be lying if said we wouldn't rather $750,000 in our pockets though, right?
