If I asked you to think of one of the most valuable substances in the world, your mind would probably go to gold, diamonds or even saffron. But all of them would be wrong.
Yep, there’s actually a powder which has been crowned as the most expensive thing on Earth by the University of Oxford and you’ve probably never heard of it.
It’s called Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerene and it costs way more than the average person makes in a lifetime.
In fact, it would take the average person living in the UK over 60 lifetimes of earnings to afford just a gram of the substance – even then you’d be £822,464 short of its £106,000,000 price tag.
And that would also mean you’d have to find a place to live for free, eat for free, drink for free – you can’t spend any money.
So why is it so expensive and what actually is it?
An illustration of the Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerenes which is worth more than £100 million (Getty Images/Science Photo Library
Well, it’s because of what the material could be used for.
The powder has been touted as a revolutionary discovery which will further enhance technology… if anyone has the pockets for it anyway.
The substance has the potential to be used to create incredibly small and highly accurate atomic clocks. Traditionally they aren’t small, in fact quite the opposite as they are about the size of a room.
These clocks are of great importance to navigation due to them being an essential part of how GPS systems work.
If these clocks were small enough they would be used to pinpoint the location of something extremely accurately, and Oxford scientists who developed the substance believe smartphones will even have Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerenes inside them.
Interestingly the name of the material, specifically the ‘fullerenes’ part, is directly related to its structure.
This is a ‘cage’ of carbon atoms with a nitrogen atom inside them.
The name ‘fullerene’ refers to this ‘cage’ and is a nod to architect and philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller, who was known for his designs featuring distinctive interlocking triangles in a geodesic dome.
A gram of Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerenes is worth £106,000,000 (University of Oxford/ Getty)
Anyway, it all sounds a bit confusing, but its creation could even enable us to explore more of space.
Atomic clocks are used in space to measure distances from Earth.
NASA explained: “Navigators send a signal to the spacecraft, which then returns it to Earth. The time the signal requires to make that two-way journey reveals the spacecraft’s distance from Earth, because the signal travels at a known speed (the speed of light).
“While it may sound complicated, most of us use this concept every day. The grocery store might be a 30-minute walk from your house. If you know you can walk about a mile in 20 minutes, then you can calculate the distance to the store.”
Most of us will probably never come into contact with a gram of Nitrogen Atom-Based Endohedral Fullerenes, so I wouldn’t worry about setting up your payment plan anytime soon…