It’s a great fixer-upper in only the best location.
Sure it has some problems with the neighbours and the trash isn’t always picked up.
But for $5 quadrillion, you really can’t go wrong in wanting to make this your world.
Astrophysicist Greg Laughlin has created a formula that calculates our Earth’s worth.
By factoring in positioning in the heavens, as well as things like size and mass, Laughlin has come up with somewhat whimsical price tags for other nearby planets as well.
But because they’re unfriendly neighbourhoods to our life form, Mars was estimated to be worth less than $16,000 and Venus? You’d hardly get a penny for it.
But before anyone take the calculations to the bank, Laughlin, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, cautions he hasn’t exactly presented the formula to any scientific journal.
Instead, it’s tucked among things like “the mass-period diagram” and “a planet-metallicity correlation for low-mass planets” on his site, oklo.org.
Laughlin tells QMI Agency, it was only intended “as a quantitative rule of thumb for determining the relative observational value of the extrasolar planets that are being discovered.”
Which is, um, what we assumed all along.
It’s hardly important scientifically, he adds.
His formula (see below) places a higher value on nearby planets, because we can study them better.
Since Earth sits at the centre of our existence — and is our home world — it commands top dollar in the cosmic yard sale.
The $5 quadrillion is an estimated 100 times the world GDP and the roughest guess at our specials features — from buildings, to roads to ports.
But fearing some may see the price now firmly set, Laughlin points out: “In no way can a crass dollar value be placed on the value of the natural world, or human society, or the world of ideas.”
To do so would be completely inappropriate in any broad sense, or even in the intentions of his formula, the scientist adds.
Which means, when you make an offer, there’s some wiggle room to negotiate.
