Posted on 06/11/2021 11:51:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
At 563 carats, the Star of India is the world’s largest gem-quality blue star sapphire, and is approximately 2 billion years old. (Image credit: D. Finnin/Copyright AMNH)
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What does the legendary Star of India — a 563-carat star sapphire the size of a golf ball — have in common with a 35-million-year-old petrified redwood slab; a massive cluster of sword-like crystals that looks like it came from "Game of Thrones;" and a 5-ton (4.5-metric ton) stone pillar that can "sing?"
You can see all of them, along with 5,000 other amazing stones, in the newly renovated Mignone Hall of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, which is reopening after a four-year closure on Saturday (June 12). There, one-of-a-kind precious gems appear alongside odd-looking rocks — some of which date to billions of years ago — that have been uniquely warped and twisted by extreme temperatures and pressures.
Individually and together, these objects tell a story of the diverse geologic processes that shape minerals on Earth's surface and deep inside our planet, beginning when the world was young and continuing to this day, museum representatives told Live Science.
Related: 13 mysterious and cursed gemstones
The Star of India, which formed about a billion years ago, was discovered in Sri Lanka in the 18th century. It is one of the best-known gems in the world, in part because it was famously and brazenly stolen from AMNH in 1964, along with several more of the museum's prized stones, by a pair of thieves named Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy and Allan Kuhn, Smithsonian reported in 2014, on the heist's 50th anniversary. (The one-of-a-kind sapphire was recovered and went back on display in 1965).
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
It’s like their ads used to say,
“This is it, for your JC Penney”
I can’t even remember the last time I was in a JCP. Probably when Las Vegas has a hockey team named “Las Vegas Thunder.” I think it was AHL, rather than NHL.
I was going to get my son a jersey and then I saw the price. I wish now that I had done it, anyway!
The NYS Lt. Governor is off to a good start preparing to fill the sleazeball’s shoes (although I didn’t think a governor needed to give 2 weeks’ notice). But I do wonder about one thing.
““It’s not going to be top-down. It’s going to be much more collaborative, and I will listen to everyone before I make decisive decisions,” Hochul said.”
What other kind of decisions are there? I mean, seriously.
If you change your mind tomorrow, that could be an indecisive decision.
Thank you. Didn’t expect to be back here but had to get critical doggie info from Sal.
Good one lol!
So now, I’m gone for the night. See you tomorrow or Monday or whenever!
Have a good evening, everyone!
Have a good night!
That’s pretty much the default for politicians.
Tomorrow when you change it or today when you make the one you may change?
In the second case it wasn’t a decision, it was an idea. If you change it because you learned something new then it was a decision, the best you could make at the time.
Have a good weekend and week beginning.
Probably the information you learned was that as soon as everyone found out about the decision, they hated it.
Thanks! I’ll do my best, since that sounds like an order! ;o]
Thanks! I hope yours was restful!
I woke up about 1:30, saw lightning, and figured I’d better get Jake in. Pat was lurking downstairs in the dark, the nebbish. I guess Jake stayed with him, because he didn’t get in bed with me.
Pat lurking is better than Pat being invisible!
I heard movement. I guess he was playing on his phone or something after coming home from work. At least he wasn’t keeping James up!
The lightning didn’t result in rain.
What a sweet morning floof!
Good morning. Are you feeling better today?
It’s probably overcast because I’ve got the wobblies again, but I’ll go out to mail a letter in a minute and find out for sure. If it is, today is a day I do nothing. I’m not going to risk losing my balance and falling into something.
I have to change the sheets on the bed in a bit but with the wobblies, it may take a bit longer than usual. My Mondays are much less stressful since I’ve begun changing the sheets on Saturdays!
I had some strange dreams but the only thing I remember is a plane that had to bend a wing in order to land on a runway that had a sheer cliff face on one side. Yepper. Strange indeed!
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