Sotheby's is the most prestigious auction house in the world and they often have all sorts of bizarre and unique items pass through their doors.
But this alien object may be the most interesting yet.
Sotheby's in New York auctioned off a 54-pound chunk of Mars for more than 5.3 million bucks this week. This exceeds the estimate of between 2-4 million for the meteorite discovered in 2023.
The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby's ...
That's a lotta money for a big rock. But it is by far the largest Martian stone that has made it to our planet.
It's 1 of 400 Mars rocks known to be on the planet, making this oversized paper weight a real steal.
The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby's says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).
Here's the rock on video:
The space rock was actually not the biggest ticket item in Wednesday's auction.
A juvenile dino skeleton fetched $30 million.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
