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 ...
Thanks! One of my favorites! <3
I think we have a large low front on the way. I went to put more plastic over the swamp cooler vent and really had a hard time with dizziness and lightheadedness. Horrible feelings when you’re 2’ off the floor and nothing behind you but sharp corners.
It’s done, though, so all I have to worry about is if the duct tape fails. Then I’ll have to repeat the process.
Oh, dear.
I’m glad you succeeded. I don’t know what could happen in our weather. It’ll just happen.
Kids have done a fair amount of science this morning.
This is because of the nerves in my neck. The back story is whiplash from the car accident. Flash forward thirty years, arthritis sets in and begins to pinch the nerves in the neck. I’m not on anti-inflammatories (history of ulcers) so all I can do is put hot compresses on my neck if it gets too bad. I may end up doing that before the day is over.
Excellent! Science was one of my favorite subjects! I think I should have been a botanist!
I have enough duct tape. I just don’t know if the cooler vent knows that!
Back in 1955 Leonard Wibberly wrote “The Mouse that Roared.” The premise was that the small country of The Dutchy of Grand Fenwick (or the Grand Dutchy of Fenwick - my memory is a bit foggy) was going broke. They decided to declare war on the U.S., lose, and have the U.S. give them a ton of money as it had done with Germany and Japan.
The concept that America gives really nice stuff to its enemies seems to have made a comeback since we’ve given a pipeline to Russia, an air force to the Taliban, and a major concession to allow China to buy chips (during a chip shortage).
I am seriously considering declaring myself an enemy of the U.S. and asking Joe Biden for a pile of cash.
Peter Sellers carried that off quite well. Grand Dutchy of Fenwick.
I’m expecting a coup. It’s the only thing that will save this nation. But how do we get Pelosi to sit down and shut up?
Oh, Crikey. I usually tell people not to get me started but I think I just started myself. :o|
Thanks! THAT was so exciting! Almost moreso than watching an orchid mantis at work. ;o]
Something happened to Win 10 about two, maybe three, years ago that just killed performance. Some update, or something, just sucked the zip out of the machines. We had just bought a new desktop machine, and it was really nice. Came up fast, things opened up quickly... Then something MS did sapped it.
Less so than the laptops we have, but — yeah; it’s not got half the vim and vigor it had. And there are a couple of laptops that used to be quick and responsive... they’re just NOT, anymore.
Most affected — WiFi.
You fire up the machine, and — even if it was in “Sleep” mode; not fully Shut Down — the WiFi is THE VERY LAST thing to come back to life, and you might wait two or three minutes for it. Sitting watching the icon is like watching water for your pasta come to a boil.
[Insert Jeopardy ‘thinking’ theme, here]
Last school year, one of the girls was using one of the laptops for school — I had to get her to turn the stupid machine on fully TEN MINUTES before class time just to allow for Win 10 to crawl sluggishly through its Start Up roster.
Just madness.
I finally got fed up and loaded Ubuntu onto my ancient HP laptop.
It’s zippy. I got Libre Office for it, so I can open, edit, and save all things MS Office. I put the Brave browser on it following the instructions online... Linux is a foreign land to me, but it’s worth the extra gut check of a few complex-looking command line instructions installing software, because the danged thing WORKS when I turn it on, and QUICKLY.
I got that. I don’t like Win 10. In fact I haven’t liked anything MS has put out since Win7. So as soon as I can figure out how to do it, I’ll install Linux.
I think Libre Office is similar to OpenOffice (I learned Word, but I’ve never used it since I had to quit work, and heard about OO.) The thing that scares me about Linux is if I have to do any partitioning. I don’t know how to do that, but I’m so fed up with Win 10 that I want to trash the laptop, and all the while I understand that it’s not the laptop (it’s an HP) it’s the OS.
I just need to set aside a few hours when I’m feeling brainy and get busy. It’s that or buy a laptop with Linux already on it. I know Win 10 is slowly killing this machine.
Wikipedia says they can run 25 mph.
Corgis? Run that fast??
Maybe Pelosi will get CFIDS and take care of herself.
That was the urgent update to send every keystroke you make back to Microsoft for analysis. It bypasses the OSI model so it takes direct control of your NIC or WIFI adapter until it’s caught up.
I don’t understand that, but I don’t like the sound of it either!
We’re about to have a thunderstorm.
We had a few drops of rain a little earlier, but it’s cleared up, now. We need the rain so badly!
I think I hate living with the smells of my neighbors, but I think it will be worse when I move because I’ll be living in a building with four apartments instead of a duplex. Unngh.
Hopefully, the A/C will filter out a lot of it.
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