Julio Huato
The views I express here are mine alone, and not necessarily those of the U.S. government, my employer, my students, my friends, my children, or my two cats.
Forbes and nonsensical valuation
Alan Bardick, “An Exoplanet Too Far,” The New Yorker (8/24/2016):
Janssen, which orbits the star 55 Cancri A, forty light-years away, is so carbon-rich that researchers suspect that at least a third of it, a mass equivalent to about three Earths, is diamond. In 2012, Forbes estimated the planet’s value at 26.9 nonillion dollars — 26.9 with thirty zeroes after it.
In 2012, Forbes estimated sheer nonsense!
For things to have any market value whatsoever, they must have some use value. They have to be useful in due quality and quantity. What kind of use could have today an unwieldy mass (3 times the size of our planet!) of diamonds located 40 light years away from our planet?
If the editors of Forbes are willing to pay $26.9 x 10³⁰ for those diamonds, or even a small fraction of it, then I have a bridge connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan they would be interested in buying.
