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 ...
Vlad ran a stop sign yesterday. He was thinking about something else. He’s getting overconfident.
How fun is a new desk?? :o])
Yes, this is a disposable society, now. Nothing is built to last.
I used to give Crazy Frank my puzzle magazines when I’d worked all the puzzles I liked. He would methodically start with the crossword puzzles and then work everything else he could, and he was so grateful to me. He said he was beginning to remember things he thought were gone forever, and that the puzzles had really helped him to recover some of his brain that was lost to insecticides. (Used to have an exterminator business in FL.)
Charlie would lose patience with him fairly easy, but no one knew that except me. He’s going to miss Frank.
Vlad needs to pay more attention to you and what he’s doing. If you need to, put your foot down and tell him no more driving until he realizes the seriousness of herding a one-ton machine through an obstacle course of cars, people, bicycles, dogs, balls and short people.
That reminds me, I need to text Tom and see how school is going, whether he got the job at the garden center, and when he’s going to drive his brothers again!
I guess screaming “We’re gonna die” at the top of your lungs might cause him to lose control of the car.
Definitely.
Well, Brave is Chrome with the invasive part stripped out.
Go read up on it. It’s lightweight and faster than Chrome, blocks adware, trackers, and other junk, and isn’t beholden to Da Goog.
If all you really need is a better browser, changing your entire O/S would be overkill. I run Brave on my Win7 machine and they get on swimmingly.
I’m going to suggest that texting and driving is not a great mental association.
Win 7 was the last OS Microsquish built for the benefit of the user.
Yes, it’s time for Tom to help his mom help his brothers again! <3
I hope he does get the job at the garden center! Fascinating!
Thanks! I have Win 10, so is that going to make a difference?
I’m tired and a little stressed right now, so I’m going to call it a day. I’ll check that site out in the morning, and see if I like it. Right now, my brain isn’t in Think Mode, so I don’t want to even try it.
I believe that 100%, which explains why they’ve done away with the support.
Agree.
In fact I was reading something the other day about Microsoft learning a difficult lesson from Windows 10 and abandoning the SaaS delivery model with the step to Win11.
Haven’t yet seen whether it will be better, but the Redmond Rabble have determined that it certainly won’t be moor of the same.
Were I faced with a machine needing an O/S change, at this moment I’d install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS rather than follow the herd to Win11.
Brave runs fine with Win10.
You don’t need Linux to enjoy it’s benefits.
I trust you! Thanks!
I hope you have a good night!
“...won’t be moor of the same.”
For once auto-correct was actually witty. I imagine many Win10 sufferers feel “moored” to their foundering O/S about now.
I deduce that was a tech joke.
Tom says they’ll let him know next week about the job. What’s not to love? He can even drive a fork lift!
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