This Is What Scientists Say Is the Most Expensive Material Known and You Will Never Guess What It Is
What is the most expensive material known to man? You might think it’s something like diamonds, but that’s not the most costly. And when it comes to scientific uses, it’s not even close.
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00:00 If I ask you what was the most expensive material known to man, you might say something like
00:08 diamonds.
00:09 But that's not the most costly, not by a staggering long shot, and especially not to
00:14 scientists.
00:15 Often the most precious materials come from space, for instance the rock and mineral samples
00:19 that were recently brought back from the asteroid Bennu.
00:21 That mission's total expenditure is expected to pass 1.16 billion dollars, and they only
00:26 brought back 9 ounces of asteroid samples.
00:29 According to Professor of Astronomy Chris Impey, that brings the total to 132 million
00:34 dollars per ounce, or roughly 70,000 times the price of gold.
00:38 That's not even close to the most expensive material known to humankind.
00:42 The astronomy professor explains the most costly material is antimatter.
00:47 Antimatter occurs naturally, but only exists for fleeting moments, as antiparticles quickly
00:51 meet particles and turn into radiation.
00:53 However, particle accelerators can produce it, but if you want to create a single ounce
00:57 of them, it would take billions of years, meaning one ounce would require the machine
01:01 to be on for that time, at a cost of around a billion billion dollars.
01:06 [Outro]