A suspected Chinese spy balloon floats off the coast of South Carolina in February 2023.
Credit: © Randall Hill, Reuters/Alamy Images

If you have seen the news recently, you have probably heard about the suspected spy balloons floating over North America. The United States has shot down four floating objects in the past two weeks. What are these mysterious balloons?

These aren’t balloons that were accidentally let go at a birthday party! The balloons in question are designed to float at high altitudes in the sky and perform a function. Some balloons track weather, and others record information from down below.

The balloon shot down on Saturday, February 4th, was a Chinese device with surveillance capabilities. One American official said it was about the size of three school buses! It was floating about 60,000 feet (18,000 meters) above the ground. The balloon had floated from Montana to South Carolina. On Friday, President Joe Biden ordered a fighter jet to shoot down the balloon. Navy officers worked to recover the debris from the Atlantic Ocean to figure out what exactly the balloon was doing. While the United States did not know much about the balloon, the discovery led Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to cancel his planned diplomatic trip to Beijing.

Starting Friday, February 10th, the United States shot down one unidentified object daily for three days. These objects were all either unlawfully in Canadian or American air space or posed a threat to flights. The object shot down on Friday was 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) over frozen waters on the northern coast of Alaska. This object was about the size of a small car. This object was smaller than the first balloon targeted a week before.

On Saturday, February 11th, the United States shot down an object around 100 miles from the United States and Canadian border in Yukon, Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed he agreed with the plan. This object was smaller than the one shot down over South Carolina eight days prior and was more cylindrical in shape.

The next day, an object soaring 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) over Lake Huron, near Michigan, was shot down on February 12th, 2023. This object was octagonal with strings hanging off of it. Officials stated it could have been a flight safety threat and a surveillance balloon.

Officials were unable to locate the objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron since they submerged under partially frozen water. President Biden called off the search for them. We will not know who controlled those objects or what they did over American territory. Researchers will study the object shot down over Canada to see what its purpose was. Biden announced that the last three objects were most likely tied to private companies researching weather or other scientific studies. However, the first balloon was confirmed to be controlled by China.

The recent events have complicated the relationship between the United States and China. Officials from China have stated the balloon was a civilian weather research airship and not a means to collect surveillance data from other countries. While some people think the balloons and objects are from alien lifeforms, American officials have claimed there has been no indication that the objects were extraterrestrial.

This illustration shows an imagined view of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft approaching the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos. The smaller spacecraft is LICIACube, built by the Italian Space Agency.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben

Scientists and engineers have designed spacecraft for many different purposes. Some bring people safely to the moon or the International Space Station. Others roam far into space to send pictures back to Earth for scientists to study. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) built the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) as a punching bag! DART was a spacecraft that intentionally collided with an asteroid.

Scientists planned the mission to find out whether a spacecraft collision could change an asteroid’s path through space. DART’s target asteroid was not a threat to Earth. But in the future, this method could be used to redirect a threatening asteroid away from Earth. Scientists are studying the effects of the DART impact to determine how the collision affected the asteroid’s path.

DART was a type of spacecraft called an impactor. An impactor smashes into the target it is studying, such as a planet, moon, or asteroid. Usually, scientists study the effects of the impact to learn about the physical characteristics of the target. Because DART was designed to move its target, it is considered a kinetic impactor.

DART traveled to Didymos, an asteroid that is about ½ mile (780 meters) wide. Didymos has a moonlet—a second, tiny asteroid in orbit around it—called Dimorphos. Dimorphos is sometimes nicknamed “Didymoon.” Dimorphos is 525 feet (160 meters) wide. Pairs of asteroids such as this one are known as binary systems. Scientists think about 15 percent of the asteroids closest to Earth are part of a binary system. Didymos and Dimorphos were chosen for the DART mission because their position is practical for a spacecraft to reach and because changes to Dimorphos’s orbit can be measured from Earth.

On Sep. 26, 2022, DART smashed into Dimorphos at a speed of 4.1 miles (6.6 kilometers) per second. Telescopes on Earth observed a bright flash at the moment of impact. Before the impact, Dimorphos orbited Didymos once every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The impact was expected to shorten this period and to move Dimorphos slightly closer to Didymos.

DART carried only one instrument, a camera. The camera helped it to steer automatically toward its target. DART also carried a shoebox-sized spacecraft called LICIACube. DART released LICIACube before it impacts Dimorphos. LICIACube photographed the impact test and its aftermath.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched DART on Nov. 24, 2021. The mission was sponsored by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The Italian Space Agency (ASI) built LICIACube. It is Italy’s first deep space probe.

The Parker Solar Probe approaches the sun in this artist’s depiction. The probe’s path takes it nearer to the sun than any other human-made object, allowing it to make close-up observations of solar activity.
NASA

The Parker Solar Probe has done the unthinkable. It became the first spacecraft to touch the sun! Scientists reported the announcement on Dec. 14, 2021, at the press conference at the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. The probe was built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The probe flew through the upper atmosphere of the sun, called the corona, to collect samples. The samples will allow scientists to understand more about the sun, just like landing on the moon paved the way for scientists to learn about the moon.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018. The probe completed its first orbit of the sun in 2019. The probe is the fastest human-made object in the solar system. The sun’s gravity is expected to accelerate the probe to extreme speeds of up to 430,000 miles (700,000 kilometers) per hour. Three years after the launch, the probe has arrived at the sun.

The goals of the mission are 1) to study how energy and heat flow through the corona; 2) to gather information on plasma (the gaslike substance the sun is composed of) and magnetic fields near the sun; and 3) to learn more about how high-energy particles travel outward from the sun.

It uses a set of instruments known as FIELDS, which has antennas to measure electric fields and magnetometers to measure magnetic fields. The probe is also equipped with a pair of cameras to capture images of the sun. The probe carries various instruments for studying particles in the solar wind—that is, the continuous flow of particles from the sun.

The sun’s corona can be as hot as 4,000,000 °F (2,200,000 °C). Because of the corona’s low density (concentration of matter), the Parker Solar Probe will not experience the sun’s most intense heat. However, it will encounter temperatures of up to 2,500 °F (1,377 °C)—hotter than lava from a volcano.

The Parker probe is planned to approach the sun 24 times by the mission’s end. Hopefully, the Parker probe can stand the heat and gather more information about the corona and solar winds.

Browns’ 1969 patent plan for an elaborate home security system suggests safety and relaxation can go hand in hand.
Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Today many people have security systems installed in their houses. Security systems set off an alarm when someone breaks in and automatically call the police. Home security systems also connect to smoke alarms and call the fire department if there is a fire. Some people also have security cameras around the house. They can show us when we have a package at the front door or when a visitor is waiting outside. Newer models even let you open the door from your smartphone or smartwatch! Do you know about the woman who invented the first home security system?

Well, she did not work for the CIA, FBI, or Homeland Security. Marie Van Brittan Brown was a Black American nurse. She was born on Oct. 22, 1922, in the Queens borough (section) of New York City. She married Albert Brown, an electronics technician. She worked late hours as a nurse and was concerned about the slow response time of the police in her neighborhood. Brown created a home security system for their house and filed for a patent in 1966. Brown called her invention the “Home Security System Utilizing Television Surveillance.”

The system involved a camera that monitored four different areas, displaying surveillance footage on a television. The system also had a two-way microphone, a button to let visitors into the house, and a button that called the police. The patent was approved in 1969. However, Brown never found a manufacturer or marketed her invention. Brown died on Feb. 2, 1999, in Queens.

An image of Venus, made with data recorded by Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft in 2016, shows swirling clouds in the planet’s atmosphere.
Credit: PLANET-C Project Team/JAXA

Venus is heating up—figuratively, that is. It has always been the hottest planet in the solar system, with surface temperatures of about 870 °F (465 °C). But new findings from the mysterious planet have been pouring in. Soon, a new generation of space probes will transform Venus from a sleepy solar system backwater to a bustling hub of scientific discovery.

Venus is the second planet from the sun. It is known as Earth’s “twin” because the two planets are so similar in size. The diameter of Venus is about 7,520 miles (12,100 kilometers). This diameter is about 400 miles (640 kilometers) smaller than that of Earth. No other planet comes nearer to Earth than does Venus. At its closest approach, it is about 23.7 million miles (38.2 million kilometers) away.

But Venus is better described as Earth’s evil twin, in respect to its withering conditions. In addition to the high temperatures, the atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than that on Earth. Carbon dioxide makes up most of the atmosphere. The skies are strewn with clouds of sulfuric acid.

Scientists sent several probes to learn more about the planet in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But as space agencies learned of its inhospitable conditions, they concentrated their efforts elsewhere, particularly Mars. The last United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission to study Venus, called Magellan, launched in 1990. Thus, scientists know relatively little about Venus, despite its close proximity to Earth and its similar size.

Despite the dearth of missions in recent years, planetary scientists continue to scan the planet with Earth-based instruments and reanalyze older data. They have returned surprising results.

Last year, a team of scientists announced that they had discovered a gas called phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere. Many living things on Earth produce phosphine; and scientists have not been able to identify any non-biological processes on Venus that might produce it. This raised the possibility that microbial life could exist in Venus’s atmosphere, where the conditions are much milder. But the discovery has been controversial. Other teams have failed to find any phosphine signature.

Last month, a team led by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast left the floating-Venusian-microbes idea high and dry. They found that Venus’s atmosphere does not contain enough water vapor to support life, irrespective of the presence of phosphine. The team determined that even the most extreme microbes on Earth require an environment with dozens of times more water than is available in Venus’s atmosphere.

Another recent study has shed light onto possible changing of Venus’s surface. Previously, Earth was the only rocky planet known to have a moving surface. A team lead by Paul Byrne, a professor at North Carolina State University, found evidence that parts of Venus’s surface might be slowly moving today. Earth’s crust slowly reshapes itself by a process called plate tectonics. Large pieces of the surface, called plates, subduct (sink) under one another, forming mountain ranges and other features. New crust forms along the ridges where the plates pull away from each other. In contrast, Byrne’s team found that pieces of Venus’s crust move like pack ice in polar oceans. Learning more about crust movement on Venus will help scientists understand how such processes develop on other planets, including Earth and exoplanets that might harbor life.

Last month, space agencies announced that not one, but three missions will be exploring Venus in the next 15 years. On June 2, NASA announced it is sending two mission to Venus. The missions were selected as part of part of NASA’s lower-cost Discovery Program. NASA expects to launch both missions between 2028 and 2030.

VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) will orbit the planet and map its surface with greater detail than ever before. It will allow scientists to better understand the planet’s features.

DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) consists of a sphere that will plunge through Venus’s thick atmosphere, studying the atmosphere’s composition. The DAVINCI+ mission planners are seeking evidence of an ocean of water that might have covered Venus’s surface eons ago.

There are other players in the new Venus boom. Last year, American company Rocket Lab announced plans to launch a small probe to Venus as early as 2023. And on June 10, just over a week after NASA’s selection DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it would also be sending a probe Venus. The EnVision orbiter will search for signs of current and former tectonic activity and the presence of a past ocean. EnVision is scheduled to arrive at Venus in 2034 or 2035.

The desire to learn more about Venus is fed by more than just curiosity about our nearest neighbor. Astronomers are looking for signs of life on exoplanets. But Venus and Earth would look quite similar from light-years away. Learning more about Venus and how it evolved to become so different from Earth will help astronomers better weed out Venus-like exoplanets in their search for ones that are more like Earth.

British businessman Richard Branson poses in front of the spaceplane VSS Unity with the other missions specialists of Virgin Galactic’s Unity-22 mission. The glass-paneled terminal of Spaceport America is visible in the background. From left to right: Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor; Branson; Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations; Colin Bennett, Lead Operations Engineer.
Credit: © Virgin Galactic

After years of delay, the age of space tourism may finally be upon us. On Sunday morning, the British businessman Richard Branson flew aboard his company Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane in a suborbital flight. Soon, paying customers will get their turn to go to space.

Branson rode with five other members of his company on VSS Unity.VSS Unity is a SpaceShipTwo model spaceplane. A special aircraft called a WhiteKnightTwo takes off from a runway carrying a SpaceShipTwo. A WhiteKnightTwo named VMS Eve took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and carried VSS Unity up above 45,0000 feet (14,000 meters). After Eve released Unity, pilots ignited a rocket engine and the craft soared up to 300,000 feet (90,000 meters). After a few minutes of weightless freefall, Unity glided back down to Earth. The whole flight lasted about 90 minutes.

Branson and the other mission specialists float around the cabin of VSS Unity during the spaceplane’s July 10 flight.
Credit: © Virgin Galactic

Branson has always relished spectacle, and Sunday’s flight was no different. Virgin Galactic’s live stream of the event was hosted by the American comedian Stephen Colbert. The landing featured the debut performance of “New Normal”, a new song by American singer Khalid. South-African-born entrepreneur and fellow space baron Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX) was among the well-wishers at Spaceport America.

Branson’s flight is a hopeful milestone on Virgin Galactic’s long, fraught road toward commercial operations. Branson founded the company in 2004. He licensed the technology of the American aerospace company Scaled Composites, which won the Ansari X Prize that year for developing a rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo in 2006. But the next year, an explosion during a ground test killed three Scaled Composites employees and injured three others. In 2014, a SpaceShipTwo named VSS Enterprise broke apart during a test flight. The pilot was killed and the copilot seriously injured. Despite these setbacks, Virgin Galactic forged ahead. Unity was completed in 2016 and underwent several test flights prior to its mission Sunday.

Space tourism existed long before Unity’s flight on Sunday. In 2001, the American investment consultant Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, visiting the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. Over the next several years, a handful of space tourists made similar trips. But they all paid tens of millions of dollars to buy extra seats aboard government-funded spacecraft.

Until about a week ago, it appeared that American businessman Jeff Bezos, not Branson, was going to be the first mogul to fly to space aboard his own spacecraft. Bezos, who made billions from his online shopping company Amazon, founded an aerospace company called Blue Origin in 2000. Bezos is scheduled to launch aboard his company’s reusable New Glenn rocket on July 20. Although Branson denied the existence of a race between the two, he added himself to Sunday’s flight, which was originally scheduled as a test flight, after Blue Origin’s announcement.

Virgin Galactic plans to hold two more test flights before starting paying trips, probably sometime in 2022. Then, it will begin scheduling rides for the 600 people who purchased tickets.

Space tourism will still be for the very wealthy. Virgin Galactic was selling tickets for $250,000 apiece before it paused ticket sales after the 2014 accident. Blue Origin has not yet begun selling tickets, but they are expected to be within the same range. So, if you’d like to go to space, save your pennies!

This rock, called “Máaz” (the Navajo word for “Mars”), is the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When you’re exploring a planet, you have to name things. It’s a great way to memorialize your discoveries, but it also prevents confusion: are you going to study This Rock, That Rock, or The Other Rock?

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission Mars 2020 is hard at work exploring Mars. The mission’s rover, Perseverance, landed on Feb. 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater. The mission planners have been naming important surface features in the Navajo language. This decision wasn’t planned before the rover landed, but came about by happy circumstance.

Landing on another solar system body is tough. Mission planners can guide a lander to a general destination, but they cannot pinpoint an exact landing site. Mars 2020 mission planners could guide Perseverance to Jezero Crater, but they could not know where in the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide crater the rover was going to land. Therefore, mission planners studied the entire crater to prepare for landing. They divided the crater into several sections, naming each after a place on Earth—including U.S. national monuments—that the section resembled in some way.

Perseverance landed within the section that planners had named after Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This national monument, known for its huge, colorful, steep-walled canyons, lies entirely within the Navajo reservation. The Navajo are one of the largest Native American groups in the United States. The Navajo reservation, which covers 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares), is the nation’s biggest reservation. It includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument (“Tséyi’” in Navajo) in Arizona is located on Navajo Nation land. Members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars mission scientists informally name important features to make them easier to identify. Mars 2020 mission scientists were inspired by the name of their landing site to nickname features in the Navajo language. They teamed up with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Aaron Yazzie, who is Navajo, to seek permission from the Navajo Nation. The nation’s government approved the idea and developed a list of potential names. The first name to be used was Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, for a rock near the landing site. Navajo officials also included the translation for Perseverance: Ha’ahóni.

Perseverance has to be “taught” the language, since the computer languages the rover uses cannot process the special characters and diacritical marks used in the written Navajo language. Mars 2020 team members are working to develop better transliterations using the English alphabet.

This is not the first time the Navajo language has played an outsized role in United States history. During the United States’ involvement in World War II (1939-1945), Navajo radio operators sent secret messages using a code based on the Navajo language. At the time, Navajo was an unwritten language known to few people outside of the Navajo Nation. Its complex structure, difficult pronunciation, and singsong qualities made it nearly impossible to decipher. Although Imperial Japanese forces could overhear the messages, they never managed to decode them. The Navajo radio operators, called code talkers, have been honored for their service in the war.

Mars 2020 has shed its proverbial training wheels and is breaking new ground in the exploration of the Red Planet. The helicopter Ingenuity, another part of the mission, conducted its first flight on April 19. Engineers are now pushing Ingenuity further, conducting longer, more challenging flights. The craft’s performance will gather valuable information for future Mars flyers. Perseverance’s robotic arm began conducting science on May 11. As the mission continues to explore, planners will continue to nickname features in the Navajo language—a tribute to the Navajo people, their culture, and the land they call home.

Indian-born American astronaut Kalpana Chawla
Credit: NASA

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

In 1997, the American astronaut Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) became the first Indian-born woman to travel into space. Chawla served on two missions aboard the United States space shuttle Columbia as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator.

Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, northern India. Karnal was part of the state of Punjab at that time. Today, it is part of the state of Haryana. She graduated from the Punjab Engineering College in 1982. That same year, she immigrated to the United States. In 1984, she earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin. She married Jean-Pierre Harrison, an aviation teacher and author, in 1983. She received her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1988. She then went to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1994, she was selected for training as an astronaut candidate.

In 1997, Chawla flew her first mission on the shuttle Columbia. She was the second person of Indian descent to travel in space, following the Indian-born cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1984. Chawla’s duties involved conducting experiments in microgravity, sometimes called zero gravity or weightlessness, and launching a satellite using the shuttle’s robotic arm. Her second mission was on the same shuttle in 2003. However, on Feb. 1, 2003, as the Columbia was returning to Earth after the 16-day mission, the spacecraft broke apart high over Texas. Chawla and six other crew members were killed.

Chawla received many honors for her work in space. They include the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In addition, an asteroid that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter is named the 51826 Kalpanachawla in her honor.

Credit: WORLD BOOK photo

April 23 is World Book Day, a celebration of the special role that books play in our lives. To celebrate, we at World Book (get it?) invited author William D. Adams to talk about his experience creating a special set of books, Out of This World 2.

I’m Will Adams, a content creator at World Book. I’ve had the privilege of working on many books during my career at World Book, most recently by writing the second series of Out of This World.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the local library and browsing the science and science fiction sections. But as I got older, I got frustrated by the technological leaps required in science fiction. Why couldn’t we live in space and travel among the stars already?

Out of This World is World Book’s collaboration with a branch of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called the NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). NASA is world-famous, but you may never have heard of NIAC before. NIAC is working to bring some of that technology from science fiction into existence.

NIAC is a bit like a startup incubator for space exploration projects. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else from across the United States may submit a proposal to NIAC about an idea that could revolutionize the way we reach, explore, or live in space. The idea has to be revolutionary and largely unstudied: no small plans are allowed. A committee reviews the proposals and awards small grants to the most deserving projects.

The NIAC inventors use the money to test their ideas and to work out details of their designs. The hope is that the best ideas become part of NASA missions or get picked up by the private space industry.

One of the most prominent ideas to “graduate” NIAC is the starshade. A starshade is a spacecraft with a giant, unfolding shade, a bit like a giant umbrella. The shade can block out a distant star’s light, enabling a space telescope to directly image any exoplanets (distant planets) orbiting around it. It’s the same principle as using your hand to block the sun’s light when trying to see something in the bright sky. Engineers hope to launch a starshade in the next 5 to 10 years.

I had so much fun interviewing the scientists and engineers for this series. They’re all incredibly smart people, of course, but also down to earth and from a wide variety of backgrounds. And—no surprise here—many of them were inspired by books growing up, both fiction and nonfiction.

Out of This World reads like a blueprint for the future. It shows how we can study other planets, how we can get to those planets faster, how we can live in space or on other planets, and even what to wear when we get there!

Amazingly, Out of This World 1 & 2 only scratch the surface of the innovative concepts that NIAC has funded. And, NIAC’s blueprint for the future grows every year. Just a couple of weeks ago, on April 8, they released their 2021 Phase II and III grants. These awards are for projects that are proven to work but need more research and development before they can be incorporated into mission designs.

One 2021 Phase II grant is to further study plans for a huge radio telescope. Remember the Arecibo telescope that collapsed last year? Think of this as an extra-large replacement—but located on the far side of the moon! NASA engineer Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay proposes sending a robotic probe to construct a giant radio dish in a lunar crater. Shielded from the noisy radio-wave emissions of human technology on Earth, such a telescope could study the early history of the universe. I can’t wait to write about it in series 3!

I hope you celebrate World Book Day by picking up a book and getting inspired, just as many of the NIAC inventors did. Maybe you’ll be inspired to think about things a different way, to write your own story, or even to explore the stars.

Nyan Cat
Credit: © Chris Torres

How much would you pay for an image of an animated cat with a Pop-Tartlike body soaring through a starry sky, trailing a rainbow in its wake?

If you said about $600,000, then you might be the proud owner of a non-fungible token, or NFT, of this feline-pastry-color explosion (also known as Nyan Cat).

An NFT is a unique digital file of such things as a piece of digital art, video clip, or digital coupon. A person can buy an NFT, becoming the sole owner of that digital file. Think of it as a digital certificate of authenticity.

The key word is digital. This means that the person who purchased the NFT of Nyan Cat can’t display the framed picture in a museum or even touch the picture to see if the Pop-Tartlike body is as flaky as the original treat. Rather, an NFT represents ownership of something you cannot hold in your hand.

NFT’s have been attracting a lot of attention because they have been fetching extremely high prices. A video clip of the basketball superstar LeBron James blocking a shot sold for $100,000 in January. Two months later, the artist known as Beeple sold his digital collage Everydays: the First 5000 Days for $69 million.

Everydays: the First 5000 Days is a JPEG created by Mike Winkelmann, known professionally as Beeple. The work is a collage of 5000 images created by Winkelmann for his “Everydays” series. A non-fungible token representing Everydays: the First 5000 Days was sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, the highest price paid for an NFT and the third-most expensive work by a living artist.
Credit: Everydays: the First 5000 Days (2021), JPEG created by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann); Christie’s

Just as you can’t pick up and hold an NFT in your hand, you can’t pick up an NFT at your local supermarket. There are several online NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea, Rarible, and Mintable. There is a marketplace for basketball moments called NBA Top Shot. And, if you’re in the market for a social media post, Valuables sells tweets.

So, what’s so valuable about an NFT?  The owner of Beeple’s work can’t feature the image in a dining room or use the 5,000-image collage to wallpaper a house—perhaps winning the award for most expensive wallpaper of all time. People buy NFT’s, particularly NFT art, in the hopes that the value will soar. The owner of Everydays: the First 5000 Days might think that the collage could re-sell for $100 million or more. In that way, purchasing an NFT could be a good investment opportunity.

Other people buy NFT’s for publicity or to join the ever-growing community of NFT enthusiasts. Some people might just want bragging rights. And bragging rights—whether digital or tangible, Pop-Tartlike or Toaster-Strudelike—are always valuable.