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 ...
Best wishes for a quick and full recovery from all that ails your computer.
My rilly rilly expensive CAD program won’t run on Linux, or any version of Windoze newer than Win7.
We went to Monroe. It’s a safer drive. Being a passenger is definitely making me dizzy and disoriented. I’ll be glad when Tom can take over.
Thanks.
Logging off of FR soon, if I don’t come back it’s either no computer or no FR password...
Oh dear. That last post is 404. Bodes ill.
LOL! Think of it as an anti-jinx.
W00t!
I’m sorry, Nully! Text me if you need anything I can afford to part with!
Stress. I recognize the symptoms. Someone else needs to take over, or the practice needs to be suspended until someone else can take over. That dizzy and disoriented situation is not good.
Please, don’t do that to yourself. Stop the lessons until Tom can take over. Or Pat. He’s licensed. I would name someone else, but.
Outta here, bye...
XO
Naptime. It’s important to me that the boys learn to drive, so I will tough it out until Tom is free.
I understand that, but you’re not going to help them by being too sick to help them!
Anyway, please be careful!
I recomember programs like those.
We have an XO? I thought this was a disorganized group.
I’m okay after lying down. I think I’ll go paint flowers for my next thing.
Heh, very funny. On Vlad’s drive yesterday, I saw a lady with a Standard Poodle. It was having a nice walk by a pond.
Heheheh.
You’ve been elected, ArGee...
Our standard poodle doesn’t do nice walks yet. There are still too many distractions. And she gets really hyper. We should have had a back yard.
A pond with waterfowl would probably not be the best venue, then.
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