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 ...
Poor driving is not limited to immigrants. It is universal.
The boys went to driving school for their required Driver’s Ed, but the practice has to be done with us or another qualified driver, which will be Tom once he’s finished summer school, unless the Driving Adventures scare him into getting a real job.
In other driving related news, I saw a clip while at F-I-L’s for Father’s Day about a company trying to come up with some way to determine if someone’s driving is being impaired by marijuana. Apparently there isn’t any way of detecting the chemical changes in the bloodstream so they’re looking at cognitive tests. It will make it kind of hard to give something to cops they can use at a traffic stop. We may be going back to, “Please walk in a straight line.”
Back when everyone was saying pot should be legalized because it was no worse than alcohol I would ask, “So, there aren’t enough little crosses on the sides of roads already?”
Welcome ... to the liberal world.
I’m surprised police stop anyone at this point. Maybe it’s just reflex, because there’s certainly no percentage in it for them.
Rumbling along nicely now, thanks ArGee.
Just one of life’s little interludes.
The Sun is out, the sky is blue...there is a great fat Pigeon sat in the Willow tree outside the compound.
Just staring in...like it is watching us. Staring...writing down notes in Cyrillic in a little notepad.
The police ‘ere have swabs they wipe across your forehead if they suspect you are under the influence of anything exotic.
It changes colour indicating the type of ‘spice’ you’ve (not) inhaled.
Saves a lot of time and hassle.
“Don’t worry officer...I always drive this badly”
The beautiful cat is sitting out on the cement, harassing birds by existing. I can hear the weeds ... er, native greenery ... growing.
Huh, that’s really interesting.
From...https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160309-why-does-britain-have-such-bizarre-place-names
Fascinating history of British place names.
I saw those swabs in action in a documentary on drug use. It was interesting, because it would seem they’ve been in use for quite some time.
Nope, not limited to immigrants at all. Some people are just bad drivers, some aren’t focused and some are just arrogant.
Ah. Thanks for clearing up my confusion about the driving school. Some days, the brain just doesn’t want to work.
G'orning, y'all.
Driving schools...have to get the young ones started early. Once they’re big enough to see over the hood is about the right age. Dad started me out on the bumper cars at about six...learned early about the physics of rear end collisions, getting t’boned, uncontrolled spin outs, etc...and whiplash.
;>)
Some of those village names are absolutely wonderful!
I learned at 13, but then, I grew up in a farming community, where everyone was behind the wheel in the fields. Then there were the drag races on the county roads...
One of the more interesting thing about licensing young’uns to drive is the idea that a license to drive a car is a license to drive any car they make. You can get your license in a Mini and then hop in a Porsche or a heavy-duty pickup. You don’t have to be rated for the different behaviors these different vehicles exhibit.
When you get a pilot’s license you have to at least take-off and land a plane 3 times with a pilot rated for that plane before you can fly it solo. And being licensed for a single-engine plane doesn’t mean you can fly a multi-engine plane. You have to do much more to get licensed for each type than just take-off and land 3 times.
Yup...lots of fun.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to learn to fly one of the big air buses. The cockpits are mega-intimidating!
Good Morning SG,
:)
Survived 1/2 hour with James. Vlad is next.
We do have a bit of a driving whilst ‘spiced’ problem , so they are helping a lot.
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