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Pharaoh's Gem Brighter Than a Thousand Suns
Tamas Feher from Hungary writes "An Italian archaeologist accidentally found that the central gem in Tutankhamun's regal necklace is not amber, but a mere piece of yellow glass. Kinda cheap for the famous Egyptian pharaoh, best known for his splendid golden mask. Except that piece of glass is much older than civilization. Where did it come from, StarGate? Kind of. Scientists now think a meteorite much larger than the Tunguska event fell from the sky and exploded over the Sahara in prehistoric times. The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers."
That suggests to me he dropped and broke it. :)
Doesn't lightning strike the desert? I know it doesn't rain that often in the Sahara, but still, I find that at least as plausible as a huge meteorite.
Looks like Naquadah to me...
If the explosion happened "before civilization" then it might be hard for there to be any memory of the "apocalyptic event" that created the glass. We're talking 800,000 years here... even before the advent of oral legend (Mmmmmmm.... oral legend).
Just thinking of possible alternate sources of prehistoric yellow glass, I know volcanic glass is usually black (obsidian), but surely there are some situations in which molten lava melts sand of various compositions that happen to be in its path, and therefore could conceivably result in other colors of glass? And I know there are no volcanoes in Egypt, but it could have been brought from elsewhere, the Egyptians were known to do a bit of trading now and again. Since they don't actually seem to have any actual evidence for the meteorite theory, it seems just as plausible.
Oh no... it's the future.
The actual gem was replaced with a piece of yellow glass by grave robbers who did a very good job of concealing their tracks.
is in thier rarety. Glass was a gemstone before it could be made in quantity. This necklace may be OLD. Glass, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, it's all the same. The jewlery industry is trying very hard right now to find some way to discount the value of man made stones, or we may soon see the value of all gems erode as the value of glass did once.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Don't you mean the FAARGATE!?!??
We don't vant to get sued. Just be sure it has a mohawk and a wheelchair.
From TFA:
Compare and contrast.
The other day I was skimming through a book I very much enjoyed as a boy: Asimov on Astronomy.
Chapter 2 is about asteroids and comets that may impact the Earth, and how much damage they would do. He concludes with:
Asimov was writing in 1966 but still should have known better. The kinetic energy of a shattered object is the same as the intact object. The only difference is that the energy will all be shed in the atmosphere instead of mostly in the lithosphere. Human suffering might be ameliorated somewhat but unless the trajectory of the pebbles is changed, the atmosphere is still getting superheated with disasterous local, and possibly global, effects. If you're standing under the shooting-star display, then like any nearby sand, you're getting cooked.
Yes, this ruined the ending of Deep Impact for me. Yes, I'm a geek.
Considering that the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to master glassworks, it seems somewhat unlikely that the Pharaoh's prized gem would be mere glass. Unless, that is, there were other legends or sources of value attributed to the gem. Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When you go to the jewlrey story, you'll find that the prettiest gems with the deepest color are the man-made gems. The natural gems look faded and washed-out in contrast to the "laboratory" made versions. The man-made emeralds are the deepest green, the man-made rubies are the deepest red, and man-made saphires are the brightest blue.
For some people the value might be in the scarcity of the natural gems, but for me the value is in the aesthetic decorative value of gem (with the lab gems being usually of better color).
i wonder if they are aware of this HUUUUGE 19 mile wide impact crator nearby ;)
c rater.html
;)
;)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_big_
i mean this crater is sooo damn big that it wasnt even noticed till it was seen by satalites
theres on in europe like that too
its sooooo damn huge, an entire town is built in it, and an entire cathedral was built using a special rock that only forms from extreeeme compression and no one even knew it was a crater until some scientists realized the cathedral was built from that rock
when they are tooo big its hard to notice
like when you capture a lizard and it escapes and crawls onto the back of your arm, and thinks its safe cause it cant see your face
your so big compared to him that it doesnt even realize its still on you
I agree with you. However in 200 years when synthetic pure white diamond is used commercially in very large crystals, when corundums(i.e. saphires) are used for windows, our great grandchildren will wonder about us wearing what is to them just glass. I wonder what jewelry will be like when our physical scarcity matches our current digital scarcity. How will we adapt to such abundance?
It turns out that while Tut's sarcophagus initially appeared to be ordinary gold, it is in fact solid fucking gold. "Yeah, I couldn't believe it", Dr. Packenwood said, "but when we finished running all the scientific experiments on the coffin, it turned out to be 200 lbs of solid fucking gold!"
stuff |
I cant believe how scientists create complete scenarios with details for things that happened aeons ago and they do not have even the little of sufficient evidence to justify sufficient crap :
Scientists now think a meteorite much larger than the Tunguska event fell from the sky and exploded over the Sahara in prehistoric times. The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers.
And then the fish were living in trees, and people had 3 legs. Ah, the meteorite brought to you by courtesy of benign aliens.
Read radical news here
Remember though, Kay Jewelers sells only Created gemstones not synthetic ones.
Yes I was actually told this looking for a Vday present.
Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.
Well, that's assuming that someone saw the meteor strike, wasn't killed by it, and the legend was passed down through the generations. That's quite a lot to swallow with their being no evidence for any of it.
The distinguishing feature of the glass is that it isn't man made. Given that glass beads were common in Egypt in 1500 BC, and Tut ruled around 1300 BC, I'd say they must have known this wasn't just normal man-made glass. Perhaps they found it in the desert, but knew of glass as only a man-made substance. Finding something in the middle of nowhere in large chunks that couldn't possibly be made by a person, but which you've only seen before as being made by a person is pretty amazing. It'd be like finding big chunks of pure iron in the middle of knowhere. You've seen Iron before, but it's something that's created by people. I could easily see that such a find would make this glass special.
In fact, the earliest known uses of Iron around 4000 BCE come from meteorites. From wikipedia:
Which brings up the possibility that this glass was found before glassmaking became common, so it had a special value assigned to it. The point I'm trying to make is that no one had to see the actual meteor impact to know that this was special glass.
AccountKiller
Man-made gems can be more ethical as well since they don't finance activities which further human suffering.
;-)
I see we have incompatible opinions on marriage...
throw a 10 pound bowling ball off the empire state building
throw 20 pounds of BB's off the empire state building..
same effect? I don't think so.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Keep an open mind... Some new information (Esoteric and academically/Scientific), I recently saw spoke about ancient civilizations, +10 000 years and more (example, Lumeria and Atlantis, to name only two.) (To take a part), from a very long and complicated history/story The ancients had wars with very powerful nuclear weapons which resulted in to creation of all known desserts. Egypt was very important had first pyramid.(the one with no markings) (This is important as it was always fought over repeated blast, otherwise there would not have been sand to make the glass) Egyptians had long and integrated history with the civilization from Atlantis. So when I read this story I was pleasantly surprised that we have evidence about something that happened a very long time ago preserved with the pharaoh. 800 000 years, no problem... Ancient Civilizations 180 000 million to beginning of last ice age. Not going to give you the whole story go on do your own research and make up you own minds
The Sahara is currently as dry as it was about 13,000 years ago.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Aluminum is very common, but it's always found as a salt or oxide, originaly to smelt alluminum they mixed AlO with sodium metal and heated it until the sodium reduced the AlO to pure AL + NaO; this was a very dangerous and expensive reaction, which is why aluminum was very expensive, worth its weight in gold and rare. The modern method uses electric arc furnaces and electrity to cheap to measure, they just melt the baxite ore and the electricity electrolyses the ore into metal.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
LOL, I seriously doubt they allowed a hardness test to be done on the gem. It requires indentations be made and then measured, unless I am mistaken. And while the latest greatest tools might make very small indents the risk would seem to great for a treasure of King Tut. On the other hand, the refraction index and the static charge are more believable tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_scale
Often scientific curiousity takes a backseat to preservation, as well it should.
DeBeers. They have the world's monopoly on diamonds and are quick to buyoff any new mines and ventures to control the supply. They are shitting bricks(diamonds?) and spending millions into detecting the ever more sophisticated synthetic diamonds. With all the effort they force on you to make the "perfect" diamond it will cost more than just buying one from them.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
1. Italian scientist finds self alone in room with ancient amber necklace
2. Takes wife's aniversary gift out of pocket and..
3. Makes up BS story to tell the press
4. Profit
Next week we'll have a story on how Tutenkhamen's stuff was found in Venice, provoking theories that the Egyptians came from Europe and were sold out of it a la columbus & native Americans.
Remember though, Kay Jewelers sells only Created gemstones not synthetic ones.
That's actually a more accurate description. A lab-grown diamond is a diamond, just as much as a mined diamond is a diamond.