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 ...
I’m impressed with his endurance! I never considered becoming a driving instructor. I get carsick.
I get sick of the car. But I guess that’s not the same thing.
I just noticed your tag. I think Mark Twain said something about if God created everything all at once then He had an incredible fascination with bugs.
So I would add “and lots and lots of bugs.”
True, there are lots and lots of bugs, but I live fungi better.
Awww... A morning squee!
Good morning. I hope you slept well.
We’re here in Cabot, after driving through the same wicked rainstorm three times. It was an awful event!
But I’m safe and ready for the next step which won’t take place until Friday, next week.
Good morning, all.
Happy Friday!
Glad you’re safe and sound. That rain storm must have really liked you.
Happy Friday, Undead FRiends.
DP and I went to a church event last night and turned our phones off. When we got home about 8:30, Vlad was on the landline phone with someone, saying, “What, who is this? Tom? What? This ... is ... Vlad ... speaking ... Vlad! Tom’s brother!, Oh! you should talk to Mama!”
Several iterations of “Who?” and “What?” later, it became clear that I was talking to Malcolm, an old friend of Bill and Tom from Boy Scouts, and that he and Tom were at a bar and they were both drunk, but Malcolm was sober enough to call for a ride for Tom. (In his state, he had trouble registering that he was talking to adult-sized Vlad: he remembered Vlad being six years old.)
DP went to get Tom - fortunately not a great distance - and I left a message with Tom to call me if he needs a ride back to his car this morning. Malcolm was able to walk to his own apartment and then back to his car in daylight.
Great that you arrived!
Is the next event the actual move-in to the new place?
We made it to another Friday!
Good Morning, not sure that I was able to follow along with all of the players, but it sounded like it ended up well!!
Thank you!
It was a massive storm that was moving north and east, and we drove through it, then drove through it again after we stopped for gas, and then drove through it a third time when we made a pit stop. We barely got the rig backed into the driveway when it started again.
But yes, safe and sound, but not necessarily sane!
I’m glad that one of the guys had sense enough to call for a ride for Tom! Excellent!
Thanks!
We’ll unload the truck tomorrow at a storage place and with luck, a week from tomorrow, we’ll move it all into the apartment.
I suspect that you were driving through the remnants of Pamela... it was a hurricane that entered Mexico from the Pacific side and headed northeast right up to and through Texas...
Yep, that would be it! I didn’t know the source. I watched some of the weather in the hotel room Wednesday night, but I missed the part about Pamela, and got the part about the path of this massive amount of rain.
My Favorite Son said, “Looks like we’ll miss it,” and I said, “If we’re lucky and stay overnight somewhere tomorrow.”
Obviously, we weren’t and we didn’t.
We got some of it, but not as much as other places... the bulk of it missed to our West on Wednesday, and the rest of it missed to our East early Thursday... I think that we ended up with about an inch and one half...
It was a “HECKA” storm to drive in!!
Yeah, everything is fine. I have a large family with an array of hangers-on, so it confuses me, too. “Who is that on the sofa, and do his parents know where he is?”
Tom hasn’t called me, so either he didn’t need to be anywhere, or Malcolm picked him up. Malcolm was buying the beer, so he felt responsible for Tom’s being so smashed!
He’s a nice boy. We’ll invite him over for dinner soon and see if Bill can come, too.
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