Could Lil Uzi Vert become the first person to own a planet?
According to tweets from Grimes, the rapper has his sights set on WASP-127b, a planet situated 520 lightyears away from Earth.
Life
Words: Jade Wickes
Over the last few weeks, the world’s best-known billionaires have been falling over themselves in a bid to further explore the Earth’s galaxy. Sir Richard Branson has successfully completed his flight to the edge of space, while Jeff Bezos made his ascent in a dildo-shaped rocket. Meanwhile Elon Musk has been hard at work on his own rocket-producing company, SpaceX, which seeks to revolutionise space travel altogether.
And it seems rapper Lil Uzi Vert wanted a slice of the action. So naturally, he announced last night via Twitter that he’d be purchasing a planet, just to show everyone else up.
More specifically, Grimes – Musk’s wife – initially tweeted a picture of planet WASP-127b, the planet Lil Uzi has his eye on. “Apparently @LILUZIVERT owns this planet — just a heads up”, the post read, followed by “Documentation almost complete for @LILUZIVERT to legally claim wasp-127b — this is huge! First human to legally own a planet”.
This is the second in a series of strange moves for the American rapper, who recently made headlines for embedding a huge, glistening 10-carat diamond worth $24 million into his forehead, having since been removed, mysteriously. How can you possibly top that? By purchasing a planet, apparently.
In response to Grimes’ tweets, Lil Uzi – whose real name is Symere Bisil Woods – confirmed his plan, even though he was trying to keep the whole operation a secret: “I tried 2 surprise everyone. Still working on it,” he tweeted.
The WASP-127b, Lil Uzi’s planet of choice, was discovered in 2016 and is 1.4 times larger than Jupiter. Fellow Twitter users were quick to point out that it would take the rapper some time to get there, though – 520 light-years, to be precise. For context, it would take around 37,200 years to go one light year, even if you were travelling five miles per second.
Time isn’t the only thing standing in the way of Lil Uzi’s planet-owning dreams. According to Wealthy Gorilla, his net worth is estimated to be around $16 million (£11.6m), and although there’s no concrete data around how much a planet usually costs, it’s probably going to be more than that. Last month, an anonymous bidder paid $28 million (£20.4m) for a spare seat on Jeff Bezos’ dildo-rocket alone.
Whatever happens next, let’s hope we’re invited to the WASP-warming. See you in, er, 4.92e+18 years.
