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 ...
Yes, it is colder than expected!! It’s 40-something degrees, with the wind right out of Canada or someplace colder, and we walked over to Applebee’s to get out meal of the day. FREEZING!
Not so bad coming back because the wind came from behind us, but it was still cold.
We’ll fill up again in the morning, and try to put 400 miles behind us by the time we get tired.
More later because I’m tired, I think, and I want to lie down.
I had some emails to write, then some changes to an account and while I was trying to do that, FS got tired and to his room. No, he wasn’t pouty! just tired from driving.
With luck, I’ll sleep in until around 0600. I hope!
See ya tomorrow!
Best wishes. So exciting that you’ve made it so far!
w00t!
Good morning. Happy Humph day.
I’d like to go back to bed with Kitteh, but important things await.
25 cents for that is a bargain of a lifetime!!
Hope that it is going well!
Hoping that you had a good rest and are on the road again...
Happy Wednesday Morning!!
Good morning! I haven’t heard from Monkey Face, but it’s not yet 6:00 a.m. where she is.
We moved a lot in the 90s and early 2000s, but we’ve been here for 18 years. My next move will be to my retirement apartment (near the library, my church, and a bar) or into the ground, whichever comes first.
I had no intention of being a mover. But life, as is its wont, made other plans.
Yes, sometimes there are "moves" to come, that may be very unexpected!
Life can be like that... not always as we planned... keeps us on our toes, I suppose...
They are on the road and hope to make it to Amarillo today.
Ahh, a trip across I40... thanks for the update!
Miles and miles of noooooothing.
“I’d like to go back to bed with Kitteh, ...”
“Stuff” got me planning my own personal Great Escape.
I got 10 years left in the tank, and my IRA is a little weak, but I got real estate, and I’m gettin close ta using it.
How?
Well, I might do something nutz like buy two houses, and three or four pieces of vacant land in a place like Poteau, OK; live in one house, lease out the other, and then work on maybe trading or developing the vacant land.
Da Gov just made enemies of the entire landscaping and tree care universe saying, “You’ve gotta throw your gas mower away by 2023.”
Rather build a catapult, and hurl them all at his house; bury the place in ‘em.
The insanity was unchained years ago, but this megalomaniac now thinks he’s some kind of political Godzilla, and he’s out kicking the crap out of everything to prove... whatever it is.
I just don’t know how much longer I can sustain.
But I’ve got ties that bind so anything I do will be hard.
I feel for you. Nobody is banning gas mowers where I live.
Rich Mullens said, “Man makes his plans, and God laughs.”
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