When matter is compressed beyond a certain density, a black hole is created. It is called black because no light can escape from it. Some black holes are the tombstones of what were once massive stars. An enormous black hole is thought to lurk at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
All the mass of a black hole is concentrated into a point at its center called the singularity. Gravity surrounding the singularity is so strong, you would have to travel faster than light to escape. This creates a spherical zone surrounding the singularity called the event horizon from which nothing can escape.
At about one and a half times the diameter of the event horizon, photons become trapped in circular orbits around the black hole. [Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe]
All the mass of a black hole is concentrated into a point at its center called the singularity. Gravity surrounding the singularity is so strong, you would have to travel faster than light to escape. This creates a spherical zone surrounding the singularity called the event horizon from which nothing can escape.
In theory, a black hole of any size could exist. A black hole with the mass of our sun would be 3.7 miles (6 km) in diameter. In practice, the death of a star like the sun does not compress the material enough to form a black hole. Stars with about two times the sun’s mass or more form black holes. Astronomers recognize two major types. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
Stellar-mass black holes have the mass of several sun-sized stars. They form when a dying star explodes in a supernova, then collapses under its own gravity. Matter drawn toward the black hole forms an accretion disc.
Supermassive black holes can have billions of times our sun’s mass. Matter drawn toward a supermassive black hole is compressed, heats up and may be blasted out into jets thousands of light-years long.
Stellar-mass black holes are scattered throughout the galaxy. A supermassive black hole lies at the core of many galaxies, including our own. The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is called SgrA* (Sagittarius A-star), and it is seen from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The supermassive black hole is about 26,000 light-years away, and has a mass of at least 4 million times the mass of our sun.
The powerful gravity of a black hole distorts light, space and time. One effect is gravitational lensing. A black hole between us and a distant galaxy will bend the rays of light, causing our view of the galaxy to be warped. We have yet to photograph a black hole in detail, but simulations suggest that the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center might appear to be a distorted crescent.
Black holes aren’t supposed to make flashes of light. It’s right there in the name: black holes.
Even when they slam into each other, the massive objects are supposed to be invisible to astronomers’ traditional instruments. But when scientists detected a black hole collision last year, they also spotted a weird flash from the crash.
On May 21, 2019, Earth’s gravitational wave detectors caught the signal of a pair of massive objects colliding, sending ripples cascading through spacetime. Later, an observatory called the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) caught a blast of light. As scientists looked at the two signals, they realized both came from the same patch of sky, and researchers started wondering whether they had spotted the rare visible black hole collision.
“This detection is extremely exciting,” Daniel Stern, coauthor of a new study on the discovery and an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a NASA statement. “There’s a lot we can learn about these two merging black holes and the environment they were in based on this signal that they sort of inadvertently created.”
Here’s what scientists think happened in this strange case. The two black holes that merged were locked in the disk surrounding a quasar, a supermassive black hole that shoots out blasts of energy.
“This supermassive black hole was burbling along for years before this more abrupt flare,” Matthew Graham, an astronomer at Caltech and the project scientist for ZTF, said in a university statement.
That in and of itself isn’t so strange, according to his colleague. “Supermassive black holes like this one have flares all the time,” co-author Mansi Kasliwal, an astronomer at Caltech, said in the statement. “They are not quiet objects, but the timing, size and location of this flare was spectacular.”
Scientists suspect, based on the pairing of gravitational waves and light, that the flare sprang from two small black holes merging within the accretion disk of the supermassive black hole. The supermassive black hole’s incredibly strong gravity affects the smaller stuff in the disk, even other black holes.
“These objects swarm like angry bees around the monstrous queen bee at the center,” co-author K. E. Saavik Ford of the City University of New York Graduate Center, the Borough of Manhattan Community College and the American Museum of Natural History, said in the statement. “They can briefly find gravitational partners and pair up but usually lose their partners quickly to the mad dance. But in a supermassive black hole’s disk, the flowing gas converts the mosh pit of the swarm to a classical minuet, organizing the black holes so they can pair up.”
The flash of light doesn’t come from the merger itself, the scientists think. Instead, the force of the merger sends the now-a-little-larger black hole flying off, through the gas surrounding it in the supermassive black hole’s accretion disk. The gas, in turn, produces the flare after a delay of days or weeks, the theory goes according to the statement. In the case of this event, scientists detected the flare about 34 days after the gravitational wave signal.
That’s not a guarantee that this explanation fits what happened, the researchers said.
“The flare occurred on the right timescale, and in the right location, to be coincident with the gravitational-wave event,” Graham said. “We conclude that the flare is likely the result of a black hole merger, but we cannot completely rule out other possibilities.”
The results are described in a paper published on Thursday (June 26) in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Watch for the violent solarmaximum in 2014 — you can’t miss it
What does 10 years mean to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun? Probably about as much as the last millionth of a second meant to you. Still, every decade that our old sun burns on is a decade of turbulent, sometimes violent change — a fact that becomes beautifully evident in a new time-lapse video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
What does 10 years mean to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun? Probably about as much as the last millionth of a second meant to you. Still, every decade that our old sun burns on is a decade of turbulent, sometimes violent change — a fact that becomes beautifully evident in a new time-lapse video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
What does 10 years mean to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun? Probably about as much as the last millionth of a second meant to you. Still, every decade that our old sun burns on is a decade of turbulent, sometimes violent change — a fact that becomes beautifully evident in a new time-lapse video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
In the stunning video, titled “A Decade of Sun,” astronomers compiled 425 million high-definition images of the sun, snapped once every 0.75 seconds between June 2, 2010 and June 1, 2020. Each second of the video represents one day in the sun’s life, and the entire decade blazes by in about 60 minutes (though you can see our 6-minute highlight reel above).
During that decade, the sun undergoes a sea change, slowly bubbling with enormous magnetic ripples known as sunspots, which peaked around 2014 before fading away again. The sun’s quiescence wasn’t a surprise; every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic poles suddenly switch places; North becomes South, solar magnetic activity begins to wane, and the sun’s surface starts to look like a tranquil sea of yellow fire. This period of relative calm is called a solar minimum (and we are currently in the midst of one).
Halfway between one decade’s flip-flop and the next, however, a violent shift occurs. Magnetic activity increases to a vibrant high, known as a solar maximum, and the star’s surface ripples with gigantic sunspots, bristles with lashing magnetic field lines and pops with plasma explosions known as solar flares. Each maximum peaks with another magnetic pole reversal, signaling the start of a new solar cycle.
These changes are hard to spot from Earth with the naked eye (though solar maxima do result in more visible auroras at lower latitudes around the world), but NASA’s SDO satellite sees them clearly as it monitors our star in extreme ultraviolet light. These ultra-energetic wavelengths cut through the sun’s glare and reveal the abundant magnetic changes in the sun’s outermost atmosphere, or corona. It’s a stunning spectacle to see — even if the sun has probably already forgotten all about it.
Diamonds and rubies and sapphires, oh my! Precious stones hold more than glitz and fame. They also hold mystery and intrigue. For instance, famous some are infamous for the misfortune they’re believed to attract to their owners.
Other gems are notorious for the myths surrounding their history, such as La Peregrina Pearl, which Elizabeth Taylor proudly showed off during her cameo of the 1969 film “Anne of a Thousand Days.” Take a journey through these gorgeous gemstones and the titillating tales they hold.
The Hope Diamond — The Curse of Debt
(Image credit: Chip Clark | Smithsonian Institution | si.edu)
At 45.52 carats, the beautiful grayish-blue Hope Diamond is 1 inch (25.6 millimeters) in length and 0.8 inch (21.7 mm) in width. Its history traces back to the 17th-century diamond mines of Golconda, India, where it was first purchased in its original, crudely cut, 112.19-carat form by the French merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier.
Tavernier sold the stone to King Louis XIV of France in 1668, who later had the stone re-cut and set in gold by the court jeweler. In 1792, after Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette attempted to flee France — their escape was foiled and they were guillotined in 1793 — the diamond was stolen during a looting of the French Royal Treasury, according to theSmithsonian Institution.
The diamond is believed to have then been owned by King George IV of England, but was sold after his death in 1830 to help settle his enormous debts. Thestone was then likely sold through private channels and was purchased by Henry Philip Hope, from whom it got its name. It was passed down to Hope’s family members until it was ultimately sold to help pay off their debts.
The stone was then bought by a London dealer, who quickly sold it to Joseph Frankels and Sons of New York City, who retained the diamond until they too had to sell it to cover debts. In 1909, Pierre Cartier bought the Hope Diamond and sold it to Evalyn Walsh McLean, an American mining heiress and socialite.
McLean had many misfortunes: her son died in a car accident, her daughter died of a drug overdose, her husband died in a sanitarium and her family was forced to sell their newspaper, the Washington Post, in a bankruptcy auction. After McLean’s death from pneumonia in 1947, Harry Winston Inc. purchased her entire jewelry collection.
In 1958, Winston donated the iconic Hope Diamond, which is worth a quarter of a billion dollars, to the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where it resides on display to this day.
As the museum states on its website, it “appears to have maintained the Hope curse-free.”
The Koh-i-Noor Diamond — Gentlemen Beware
(Image credit: Royal Collection | royal.gov.uk)
Like the Hope Diamond, the 105.6-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond is believed to have been extracted from the Kollur mine in Golconda, India; its name in Persian means “mountain of light.”
Its first mention appears in the memoirs of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India. Babur wrote that the diamond was stolen from the Rajah of Malwa in 1306, and that it was a whopping 739 carats in its original, uncut form, according to the “Firefly Guide to Gems” (Firefly Books Ltd., 2003).
Throughout history, the gem traded hands among various Hindu, Mongolian, Persian, Afghan and Sikh rulers, who fought bitter and bloody battles to own it. According to folklore, a Hindu description of the Koh-i-Noor warns that “he who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God or woman can wear it with impunity.”
Historical records indicate the diamond was acquired by the British in 1849 and given to Queen Victoria in 1850. To heed its legend, the diamond has since only been worn by women, including Queen Alexandraof Denmark, Queen Mary of Teck and the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, wife of King George VI.
Currently, it is set as one of the jewels within a British monarchy crown that is kept at the Tower of London Jewel House.The fight to possess the Koh-i-Noor is ongoing — India has been unsuccessfully lobbying to get the diamond back for years, while the British government maintains that it owns the gem fair and square, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Black Prince’s Ruby — The Blood-Red “Great Impostor”
Black Prince’s ruby isn’t actually a ruby at all, but a large spinel — a hard, glassy mineral that crystallizes into various shades, including fiery red. Spinels are worth significantly less than rubies, which is why the Black Prince’s ruby is also known as “the great impostor.”
The ruby is believed to have been mined from Badakshan, which is present-day Tajikistan. It was first recorded during the 14th century, when it was plundered from the Moorish Kingdom of Granada by Don Pedro the Cruel, who was the ruler of Seville, Spain, according to “Fire and Blood: Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History,” (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008)
The “ruby” was then owned by Edward of Woodstock, who was called “the Black Prince,” because of his success on the battlefield during the Hundred Years’ War. In 1415, King Henry V attained the Black Prince’s ruby and had it set in his battle helmet alongside real rubies. The king wore the helmet when he defeated the French forces at the Battle of Agincourt.
The gem was passed along to British royalty, including Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I, until King Charles I was beheaded for treason in 1649 and the stone was sold. Charles II bought the stone back from an unknown party, but nearly lost it when the infamous Irish colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the crown jewels of England from the Tower of London in 1671.
Currently, the Black Prince’s ruby is set dead-center at the front of the Imperial State Crown of England.
The Delhi Purple sapphire is another imposter, because it isn’t really a sapphire, but an amethyst, which is a type of violet-hued quartz.
The mysterious stone is rumored to have been stolen by a British solider from the Temple of Indra, the Hindu god of war and weather, in Kanpur, India, during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It was brought to England by Colonel W. Ferris, whose family then supposedly suffered many financial and health woes.
The stone was given to Edward Heron-Allen, a scientist and writer, in 1890, who claimed to have started having bad luck immediately after receiving it. He gave the amethyst away to friends, who were also struck with misfortune and quickly returned the gift back to him.
Heron-Allen warned that the Delhi Purple sapphire is “accursed and is stained with the blood, and the dishonor of everyone who has ever owned it.” Wary of its alleged powers, he kept it locked away in seven boxes and surrounded by good luck charms.
After his death, Heron-Allen’s daughter donated the amethyst to London’s Natural History Museum in 1943. Along with the stone, she gave them a letter that her father wrote cautioning future owners against directly handling it.
The mysterious Delhi Purple sapphire is now permanently on display as part of the Natural History Museum’s Vault Collection of precious gemstones.
Elizabeth Taylor loved her gems — and one of her favorites was La Peregrina Pearl, a 50.6-carat pearl that is one of the largest found pearls in the world. It measures approximately 0.7 inch (17 millimeters) by 1 inch (25 mm).
La Peregrina means “the pilgrim” or “the wanderer” in Spanish, and the pearl was discovered in the Gulf of Panama during the 16th century. King Philip II of Spain gave the pearl to Queen Mary I of England before their marriage in 1554, but he later abandoned her and she died in 1558 without an heir. She was nicknamed “Bloody Mary” after her death because of the hundreds of Protestants she ordered to be executed during her five-year reign.
Following the queen’s death, La Peregrina Pearl was returned to King Philip II, who then proposed to Mary I’s younger half-sister, Elizabeth I. The pearl was worn by Spanish royalty until the 19th century, when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded and the French seized the Spanish crown — and the pearl.
La Peregrina Pearlwas passed down to members of the Bonaparte family, but was ultimately sold to Lord James Hamilton in 1873. It was then sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 1969 to Richard Burton, who gave it to his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, as a Valentine’s Day present. The couple married and divorced twice — with their second marriage lasting only nine months. Elizabeth Taylor held on to the pearl and married a total of eight times.
After Taylor’s death in 2011, La Peregrina Pearl was bought for 11.8 million by an anonymous buyer at a Christie’s auction, according to the auction house’s official site.
The Black Orlov — The Eye of Brahma Diamond
(Image credit: Natural History Museum | nhm.ac.uk)
The Black Orlov, a 67.50-carat, cushion-cut diamond, wasunearthed in India during the early1800s. Despite its name, the Black Orlovis actually a deep, gunmetal gray in color.
According to lore surrounding the Black Orlov — which is similar to the supposed back-stories of many “cursed” gems — the diamond was stolen from asacred shrine in Southern India. The then-195-carat stone was allegedly removed from the eye of a statue of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation, wisdom and magic.
Legend has it the diamond was later acquired by the Russian princess Nadezhda Orlov, also known as Nadia Orlov, whom the stone was named after, according to “The Nature of Diamonds” (Cambridge University Press, 1998). It’s rumored that Princess Nadia, along with two of the Black Orlov’s other owners, upon attaining the diamond, committed suicide by jumping off of buildings, but these stories have not been substantiated.
In 1947, Charles F. Winson bought the diamond and cut it to its current size, also placing it in a setting surrounded by 108 diamonds and hanging it on a necklace of 124 diamonds. It has since been purchased and resold by a succession of private owners, and has been displayed at several museums, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and London’s Natural History Museum.
The Blue Diamond is the only precious stone whose current whereabouts are unknown — and whose existence has even been questioned. But it continues to be a source of bitter, ongoing drama.
The story begins in 1989, when a Thai janitor employed at the Saudi royal family’s palace crept into Prince Faisal bin Fahd’s bedroom and stole a large amount of jewelry, including a blue diamond that’s said to be bigger than the current dimensions of the Blue Diamond.
Allegedly, he hid the jewels in the bag of his vacuum cleaner, then smuggled them to Thailand, although Thai authorities maintain that there is no evidence that the Blue Diamond even exists. According to the Thai press, after Saudi authorities alerted Thai police of the crime, they captured the thief, but not before he sold off some of the jewels. He was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released after three.
Thai officials returned what was left of the loot to the royal family, who asserted that the Blue Diamond was still missing and that about half of the returned jewels were fakes. The murders and disappearances of several Saudi diplomats and businessmen who had flown to Bangkok to investigate the robbery have been linked to the so-called “Blue Diamond Affair,” but Thai authorities insist that there’s no proof that the events are connected.
In 1995, Chalor Kerdthes, the police officer in charge of the initial investigation, was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of the wife and 14-year-old son of the Thai jeweler who had been accused of making the imitation jewels. His sentence has since been reduced to 50 years, and the mysterious case of the Blue Diamond continues to strain Saudi-Thai diplomatic relations, according to an article published in The Economist in September 2010.
Because of all the deaths associated with the mysterious gem, the Blue Diamond is said place a curse onanyone who handles it illegally.
The Sancy Diamond — A Colorful History
(Image credit: Wiki Commons)
The pear-shaped Sancy diamond may appear to be white, but it actually has a pale yellow tint. The 55.23-carat diamond is believed to have originated in India. Nicolas Harlay de Sancy, a French soldier who would later become a French Ambassador to Turkey, bought the diamond in 1570. He rented the diamond to Henry III of France in 1589, then to Henry IV.
In 1604, Sancy sold the diamond to James I of England, who wore the stone as a good luck charm. One legend tells that while the diamond was being transported by King Henry IV‘s men, the courier was robbed and murdered. He had swallowed the jewel to keep it safe, and theSancy was later recovered from his stomach during his autopsy, according to the myth.
The diamond disappeared during the French Revolution, when the Royal Treasury was raided and the Sancy was stolen, along with the Regent diamond and the Hope diamond. The Sancy resurfaced in 1828, when it was bought by the Russian prince Nicholas Demidoff, who passed it down to his son Paul.
A Bombay merchant then bought the diamond and exhibited it in Paris in 1867. It was sold toWilliam Waldorf Astor in 1906, and stayed in the family until 1978, when it was sold to the Louvre Museum in Paris. It’s now on exhibit at the museum’s Apollo Gallery, where it was reunited with the Regent diamond.
The Cullinan Diamond I — The Star of Africa Diamond
Like the Black Orlov, the Orlov Diamond, which has a faint bluish-green tinge, is rumored to have once served as the eye of a Hindu god statue. The rose-cut diamond has a dome shape that resembles an egg that’s been cut in half. At 189.62 carats, the Orlov is one of the largest found diamonds in the world.
Legend has it that during the 18th century, a French solider stole it from a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu, India. The Orlov (sometimes spelled Orloff), was then sold and resold until it ended up in Amsterdam, where it was bought by Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, a Russian count.
Orlov had been having an affair with Catherine II while she was married to Peter III of Russia. Peter III was ultimately dethroned, Catherine subsequently became Catherine the Great of Russia and had an illegitimate child with Count Orlov. However, she ultimately left the count for a Russian prince, and the heartbroken Orlov gave her the giant diamond in an attempt to win back her affections.
Orlov’s grand romantic gesture was unsuccessful, but Catherine named the diamond after him and had it set in her royal scepter. Currently, the Orlov is part of the Kremlin Diamond Fund, an exhibit in Moscowshowcasing Russia’s crown jewels.
The Regent Diamond was mined in 1701 in India and was 410 carats in its original, uncut form. Morbid myths surrounding the stone allege that it was found by a slave, who managed to conceal it inside a large, self-inflicted wound in his leg.
The myth states that after stealing the diamond from the mine, the slave conspired with an English sea captain to smuggle it away on his ship, but the captain then drowned the slave and sold the diamond, according to “Diamond Deposits: Origin, Exploration, and History of Discovery” (Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc., 2002).
An English governor named Thomas Pitt bought the diamond, which has a pale blue tint, and named it after himself. He had the diamond cut to its current size of 140.64 carats and sold it the French Regent Philippe II of Orleans in 1717. The diamond was renamed as the Regent, and the French royal family showed it off in several settings, including in the crown of King Louis XV.
In 1792, the Regent was stolen, but was located a few months later. The stone was later pawned to a Berlin jeweler to help raise funds for the French army, according to “Diamond Deposits.” Napoleon Bonaparte, also known as Napoleon I, claimed the diamond back in 1801, having it set in the handle of his sword.
Following Napoleon’s death in 1821, his widow, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, brought the diamond with her to Austria, but it was later returned to France as a present. The Regent then graced the crowns of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Napoleon III.
Currently, the diamond remains set in a diadem designed for the French Empress Eugenie, and is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, along with another gem on our list, the Sancy Diamond.
The Taylor-Burton — Bad Romance Diamond for a Good Cause
(Image credit: Lucille Ball Productions, 1970)
Another of Elizabeth Taylor‘s gems, the Taylor-Burton Diamond, which was mined in South Africa in 1966, was originally 240.80 carats; Harry Winston bought it and had it cut into its current 69.42-carat pear shape.
The diamond was put up for auction in 1969, and although actor Richard Burton bid on it, he was outbid by the owners of Cartier Inc., who paid a record price of $1,050,000 for the diamond and renamed it the Cartier Diamond. Determined, Burton worked out a six-figure deal with Cartier, purchasing the diamond from them under the condition that the company first display the stone in Cartier stores in New York and Chicago.
Burton then gave the diamond to Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday during their first marriage. Originally, the massive sparkler was set in a ring, as shown in this still from the TV show “Here’s Lucy,” during an episode in which Taylor and Burton guest-starred. Taylor later commissioned Cartier to design and set the diamond in a necklace.
The couple renamed the stone the Taylor-Burton Diamond, and it served to represent their lavish lifestyle and larger-than-life relationship: the two allegedly fell in love while filming “Cleopatra” in 1963 — when they were both married to other people. The couple caused numerous tabloid frenzies throughout the years, with their relationship sometimes referred to as “the love affair of the century.”
Taylor proudly showed off the Taylor-Burton Diamond at movie premiers and events, including Princess Grace’s 40th birthday party in Monaco. After she and Burton divorced for the second time, Taylor auctioned off the rock in 1978 to an anonymous buyer from Saudi Arabia.
Reports of how much the diamond sold for range from $2 million to $5 million, but whatever the amount, Taylor used part of the proceeds to build a hospital in Botswana, Africa, at a site near where the diamond had been mined.
The deep blue, oval star sapphire known as the Star of India weighs 563.35 carats. Unlike the other gemstones in this gallery, this star sapphire is a rounded, polished cabochon, rather than faceted.
The largest found blue sapphire in the world, the Star of India’s origin is believed to trace back to Sri Lanka, where it was discovered an estimated 300 years ago. The stone’s rare, characteristic star design occurred naturally. Tiny fibers of the mineral rutile aligned in a three-fold pattern within the gem, causing incoming light to reflect in a star pattern — an effect known as asterism.
In 1900, the Star of India was donated by industrialist J.P. Morgan to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was stolen from the museum in 1964, when a group of thieves left a bathroom window unlocked during the day and climbed in through the window at night.
At the time, the uninsuredStar of India was the only gem in the museum’s exhibit that was protected by an alarm, but as luck would have it, the alarm’s battery was dead, according to media reports. The men snatched the gem, along with several other precious stones that were on exhibit, and escaped back out the window.
The robbery was one of the biggest gem heists in American history, but the three thieves were captured within only two days. While some of the stolen gems were never seen again, theStar of India was miraculously recovered in a Miami bus station locker several months later.
The Star of India was put back on display at the American Museum of Natural History, where it remains on permanent display to this day — hopefully guarded by a more reliable alarm system.
New evidence suggests these blue stones originated surprisingly close to Earth’s core.
A photograph shows the Hope diamond, taken from India in the 1600s. New evidence suggests this diamond originated hundreds of miles below Earth’s crust.
Two of the world’s most famous diamonds may have originated super deep below Earth’s surface, near the planet’s core.
All of Earth‘s natural diamonds first form deep underground from our perspective on the surface. But from the perspective of this planet’s great bulk, their usual births occur relatively far from the core. Zest the Earth like a lemon, and you’d uncover diamonds growing at the bottoms of tectonic plates. Those diamonds form about 90 to 125 miles (150 to 200 kilometers) deep, under pressure that exists just where the crust meets the more fluid outer mantle, or middle layer of the planet. No mines reach that far underground, but some of those diamonds do make their way up to where humans can reach them.
The “Hope” diamond, a large and famous stone, as well as the “Cullinan” diamond, the largest rough gemstone ever found, are different. They’re “super deep” stones, new research confirms. A 2018 paper showed that these boron-blue gemstones likely originated somewhere in the planet’s hot “mantle,” a region between the crust and the liquid outer core of the planet, Live Science previously reported This new research shows that, at least sometimes, the stones form deep in this hot zone.
The research presented today (June 24) at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference, finds remnants of a mineral called bridgmanite in two less famous diamonds of the same types as the famous gemstones.
All diamonds are crystals made of carbon and various chemical impurities. The type of any specific diamond is determined by the impurities and other conditions present during its creation. So any two diamonds of the same type likely formed in similar conditions.
Bridgmanite is a very common mineral inside Earth, but it doesn’t form in the crust or even the upper mantle.
“What we actually see in the diamonds when they reach [the] surface is not bridgmanite, but the minerals left when it breaks down as the pressure decreases,” Evan Smith of the Gemological Institute of America said in a statement. “Finding these minerals trapped in a diamond means that the diamond itself must have crystallized at a depth where bridgmanite exists, very deep within the Earth.”
This discovery, the researchers said, suggests both large blue stones originated in the lower mantle, a fluid zone extending from 410 miles (660 km) deep all the way to the planet’s liquid outer core.
The first, a 20-carat “type IIb blue diamond” from South Africa, showed evidence of bridgmanite under examination with laser light. The Hope diamond, at 45.52 carats, is a larger example of the same diamond type.
Another diamond, a 124-carat stone about the size of a walnut, is called a “CLIPPIR” diamond (which stands for Cullinan-like, Large, Inclusion-Poor, Pure, Irregular, and Resorbed). It’s from Lesotho, a country encircled by South Africa. And, as its type suggests, it is like the 3,106.75-carat Cullinan. Researchers already knew that CLIPPIRs came from very deep below the crust, but this study offers the first direct evidence that they come from the lower mantle.
Neither the Hope nor the Cullinan diamonds were studied as part of this research. But the researchers said that what’s true of the less-famous stones is likely true of the more-famous stones as well.
The Cullinan diamond no longer exists in its original large state, having long since been chopped up into smaller stones for sale. The largest two of these is now part of Queen Elizabeth II’s “crown jewels.”
The massive rough diamond turned up in 1905 just 18 feet (5.5 meters) below the surface at the British-owned Premier Mine in South Africa — a long way from its birthplace in the lower mantle. It was quickly shipped out of the region as part of the British imperial project that exploited and abused Black laborers in order to extract the region’s mineral wealth, according to Rapaport, an international corporate network that serves the jewelry market.
The Hope diamond’s precise origins are much hazier, but according to the Smithsonian Institution (which now has custody of the diamond), workers at the Kollur mines in India likely discovered the stone before it was sold to the French merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier in 1668.
Karin Hofmeester, a historian at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, wrote in an essay that men, women and children worked by the 10s of thousands in these dangerous mines at the time for slim wages and food. It’s not clear who was responsible for the Hope diamond’s discovery or where precisely it turned up.
Researchers do know that when it was found it weighed 122.2-carats, according to the Smithsonian. Once cut to its current state, the Hope passed into the hands of the French royal family, wealthy British collectors, and then American businessmen before ending up at the Smithsonian — a world away from both its lower mantle point of origin and the mine in India where it was discovered.
On June 16, 2020, the GOES-East satellite captured this GeoColor imagery of an expansive plume of dust from the Sahara Desert traveling westward across the Atlantic Ocean.
A “Godzilla dust cloud” from the Sahara Desert that’s heading toward the United States this week is the largest and most concentrated dust cloud of its kind in the past 50 years, according to news sources.
As of June 22, the dust cloud — which some experts have dubbed the “Godzilla dust cloud” — had reached the Caribbean, spiking air quality to “hazardous” levels, according to the AP. People along the Gulf Coast may be next to experience the dusty visitor.
Trade winds regularly carry dust clouds from the Sahara on a 5,000-mile (8,000 kilometers) journey across the Atlantic Ocean, but this particular formation “is an abnormally large dust cloud,” Dan Kottlowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist and lead hurricane forecaster, told the weather website.
“One of the things I noticed from this is the dust started coming off the coast of Africa several days ago, in fact maybe over a week ago,” Kottlowski told AccuWeather. “And it’s still coming. It’s almost like a prolonged area of dust.”
The huge Saharan dust cloud formed June 13, when strong atmospheric updrafts over the Sahara were picked up by easterly winds, which blew the dust cloud west over the Atlantic, according to NASA.
Data collected by instruments aboard NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite show the dust cloud’s enormity. Colin Seftor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, used that data to create an animation of the plume.
This animation shows the aerosols in the giant plume of Saharan Dust blowing off the western coast of Africa on June 13 through 18, 2020. (Image credit: NASA/NOAA, Colin Seftor)
“This is the most significant event in the past 50 years,” Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, an environmental health specialist at the University of Puerto Rico, told the AP. “Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands,” including in Antigua and Trinidad & Tobago, he said.
Dust from the Sahara plays an important role on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean; it builds beaches in the Caribbean and fertilizes soil in the Amazon rainforest during June, July and sometimes early August, according to NASA. The current cloud, however, is also affecting air quality, prompting health officials to tell people to stay indoors and use air filters, the AP reported.
Saharan dust can also suppress tropical storms. “It keeps a lid on the atmosphere and brings dry air into anything that may try to develop, which is very detrimental for tropical development which relies on warm, moist air,” Alan Reppert, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather told the site.
Image 1 of 3
On June 18, 2020, NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured this visible image of the large light brown plume of Saharan dust over the North Atlantic Ocean. (Image credit: NASA Worldview)
Saharan dust plume, seen by the NOAA-20 satellite on June 17, 2020. (Image credit: NOAA)
This animation shows the aerosols in the giant plume of Saharan Dust blowing off the western coast of Africa on June 13 through 18, 2020. (Image credit: NASA/NOAA, Colin Seftor)
Even so, this cloud likely won’t affect the Atlantic hurricane season, which often peaks in August, September and October.
“Dust tends to be much less of a problem during the heart of the hurricane season,” Kottlowski told Acuweather.
To see a 10-day computer model forecast (as of June 22) of the dust cloud, check out this graphic tweeted by the National Weather Service.
The huge dust cloud will likely reach the Texas coast on Thursday (June 24) and cover the entire Gulf Coast by this weekend, Kottlowski said. The poor air quality this Saharan dust will bring could exacerbate the COVID-19 situation, according to an April study from the Netherlands. The study, published by the World Bank, suggests that areas with increased atmospheric particulate matter (that is, air pollution) have a higher incidence of the COVID-19 respiratory disease.
“The estimates suggest that expected COVID-19 cases increase by nearly 100% when pollution concentrations increase by 20%,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Earth’s mysterious eighth continent doesn’t appear on most conventional maps; that’s because almost 95% of its land mass is submerged thousands of feet beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Zealandia — or Te Riu-a-Māui, as it’s referred to in the indigenous Māori language — is a 2 million-square-mile (5 million square kilometers) continent east of Australia, beneath modern-day New Zealand. Scientists discovered the sprawling underwater mass in the 1990s, then gave it formal continent status in 2017. Still, the “lost continent” remains largely unknown and poorly studied due to its Atlantean geography.
Now, GNS Science — a geohazards research and consultancy organization owned by the government of New Zealand — hopes to raise Zealandia (in public awareness, at least) with a suite ofnew maps and interactive tools that capture the lost continent in unprecedented detail.
“We’ve made these maps to provide an accurate, complete and up-to-date picture of the geology of the New Zealand and southwest Pacific area — better than we have had before,” Nick Mortimer, a geologist and lead author of the maps,said in a statement. “Their value is that they provide a fresh context in which to explain and understand the setting of New Zealand’s volcanoes, plate boundary and sedimentary basins.”
A tectonic map showing the age and type of rock beneath Zealandia. (Image credit: GNS Science)
The new maps reveal Zealandia’s bathymetry (the shape of the ocean floor) as well as its tectonic history, showing how volcanism and tectonic motion haveshaped the continent over millions of years. Data for the bathymetric map was provided by the Seabed2030 project — a global effort to map the entire ocean floor by 2030. (The project isabout 20% complete.)
The team also released interactive versions of both maps on a newZealandia webpage. Spend a few minutes clicking around the hyper-detailed images — and, when someone asks what you’re doing, simply tell them you’re “discovering Earth’s lost continent.”
Ancient fossils now reveal that the deep sea may be the origin of many lineages of sea creatures found closer to the surface, such as a number of sea stars, sea urchins and snails, researchers say.
Shown here, A close-up look of a deep-sea brittle star. [Read full story]
Brittle star
(Image credit: Ben Thuy)
Recent brittle star (Hemieuryale pustulata) from the deep sea, sitting on a hydrozoan colony. This type of brittle star still lives in present-day deep-sea habitats.
Deep-sea habitats
(Image credit: Ben Thuy)
Recent brittle star (Ophiochondrus stelliger) from the deep sea. Close relatives of this brittle star, which still lives in present-day deep-sea habitats, were found in the deep-sea rocks of the Alps near Salzburg.
Fossil sea urchin
(Image credit: Andreas Kroh)
With the help of amateur paleontologist Gero Moosleitner, Ben Thuy, an invertebrate paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg, and other scientists have discovered fossils of 180-million-year-old deep-sea animals in the Austrian Alps. These now shed light on the surprising history of deep-sea life.
Here, a fossil sea urchin in the family Aspidodiadematidae from deep-sea rocks of the Alps near Salzburg, Austria. Close relatives of this sea urchin still live in the present-day deep sea. [Read full story]
Sea Lilies
(Image credit: Karl Stanley, Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration)
Living isocrinid sea lilies and feather stars in the deep sea. Like their relatives in the Early Jurassic, these animals play a major role in present-day deep-sea ecosystems.
Sea stars
(Image credit: Karl Stanley, Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration.)
Living sea stars in the deep sea extending their arms into the water column to catch floating prey, much like their relatives in the Lower Jurassic deep sea.
Fossil snail
(Image credit: Dave Pawson, Smithsonian Institution/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.)
Living sea urchin (Family Aspidodiamdematidae) from the deep sea. Members of this sea urchin family were discovered in Lower Jurassic deep-sea rocks of the Alps near Salzburg, Austria, and are the oldest of their kin.
Sea lily
(Image credit: Karl Stanley, Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration.)
Living sea lily in the deep sea. Close relatives of this type of sea lily were discovered in the Early Jurassic deep-sea rocks of the Alps near Salzburg.
Extended arms
(Image credit: Karl Stanley, Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration.)
Living sea stars in the deep sea extending their arms into the water column to catch floating prey, much like their relatives in the Lower Jurassic deep sea.
Fossil snail
(Image credit: Steffen Kiel )
Fossil snail found in the Lower Jurassic deep-sea rocks of the Alps near Salzburg. Close relatives of this type of snail still live in the modern deep sea.
Deep-Sea discoveries
(Image credit: Gero Moosleitner from Salzburg)
Here, the place in the Austrian Alps where the deep-sea fossils were discovered.
“The slopes of the gorge we got fossils from were quite steep, which made work a bit difficult, but it was also quite fun,” Thuy told Live Science. “We dug up the rock, put it in a sieve, and washed [the rocks] in the brook downslope to get fossils. It was a bit like panning for gold.” [Read full story]
The Southern Ocean is a vast band of open water that encircles the entire planet between Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere landmasses. It is the cloudiest place on Earth, and the amount of sunlight that reflects off or passes through those clouds plays a surprisingly important role in global climate. It affects weather patterns, ocean currents, Antarctic sea ice cover, sea surface temperature and even rainfall in the tropics.
But due to how remote the Southern Ocean is, there have been very few actual studies of the clouds there. Because of this lack of data, computer models that simulate present and future climates overpredict how much sunlight reaches the ocean surface compared to what satellites actually observe. The main reason for this inaccuracy is due to how the models simulate clouds, but nobody knew exactly why the clouds were off. For the models to run correctly, researchers needed to understand how the clouds were being formed.
The Southern Ocean is a vast band of open water that encircles the entire planet between Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere landmasses. It is the cloudiest place on Earth, and the amount of sunlight that reflects off or passes through those clouds plays a surprisingly important role in global climate. It affects weather patterns, ocean currents, Antarctic sea ice cover, sea surface temperature and even rainfall in the tropics.
But due to how remote the Southern Ocean is, there have been very few actual studies of the clouds there. Because of this lack of data, computer models that simulate present and future climates overpredict how much sunlight reaches the ocean surface compared to what satellites actually observe. The main reason for this inaccuracy is due to how the models simulate clouds, but nobody knew exactly why the clouds were off. For the models to run correctly, researchers needed to understand how the clouds were being formed.
Clouds are made of tiny water droplets or ice crystals, or often a mixture of the two. These form on small particles in the air. The type of particle plays a big role in determining whether a liquid droplet or ice crystal forms. These particles can be natural — like sea spray, pollen, dust or even bacteria — or from human sources like cars, stoves, power plants and so on.
To the untrained eye, an ice cloud and a liquid cloud look much the same, but they have very different properties. Ice clouds reflect less sunlight, precipitate more and don’t last as long as liquid clouds. It matters to the weather — and to climate models — what kinds of clouds are around.
Climate models tend to predict too many ice clouds over the Southern Ocean and not enough liquid clouds when compared to satellite readings. But satellite measurements around the poles are hard to make and less accurate than other regions, so we wanted to collect direct evidence of how many liquid clouds are actually present and determine why there were more than the models predict.
This was the mystery: Why are there more liquid clouds than the models think there are? To solve it, we needed to know what kinds of particles are floating around in the atmosphere around Antarctica.
The Southern Ocean is a vast band of open water that encircles the entire planet between Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere landmasses. It is the cloudiest place on Earth, and the amount of sunlight that reflects off or passes through those clouds plays a surprisingly important role in global climate. It affects weather patterns, ocean currents, Antarctic sea ice cover, sea surface temperature and even rainfall in the tropics.
But due to how remote the Southern Ocean is, there have been very few actual studies of the clouds there. Because of this lack of data, computer models that simulate present and future climates overpredict how much sunlight reaches the ocean surface compared to what satellites actually observe. The main reason for this inaccuracy is due to how the models simulate clouds, but nobody knew exactly why the clouds were off. For the models to run correctly, researchers needed to understand how the clouds were being formed.
Clouds are made of tiny water droplets or ice crystals, or often a mixture of the two. These form on small particles in the air. The type of particle plays a big role in determining whether a liquid droplet or ice crystal forms. These particles can be natural — like sea spray, pollen, dust or even bacteria — or from human sources like cars, stoves, power plants and so on.
To the untrained eye, an ice cloud and a liquid cloud look much the same, but they have very different properties. Ice clouds reflect less sunlight, precipitate more and don’t last as long as liquid clouds. It matters to the weather — and to climate models — what kinds of clouds are around.
Climate models tend to predict too many ice clouds over the Southern Ocean and not enough liquid clouds when compared to satellite readings. But satellite measurements around the poles are hard to make and less accurate than other regions, so we wanted to collect direct evidence of how many liquid clouds are actually present and determine why there were more than the models predict.
This was the mystery: Why are there more liquid clouds than the models think there are? To solve it, we needed to know what kinds of particles are floating around in the atmosphere around Antarctica.
Before we went down there, we had a few clues.
Previous modeling studies have suggested that the ice–forming particles found over the Southern Ocean may be very different from those found in the Northern Hemisphere. Dust is a great ice cloud seeder, but due to the lack of dusty land sources in the Southern Hemisphere, some scientists have hypothesized that other types of particles might be driving ice cloud formation over the Southern Ocean.
It’s hard to directly measure the composition of particles over the Southern Ocean — there simply aren’t very many particles around. So, to help us track down what is inside the clouds, we used an indirect approach: the bacteria in the air.
The atmosphere is full of microorganisms that are carried hundreds to thousands of kilometers on air currents before returning to Earth. These bacteria are like airborne license plates, they are unique and tell you where the car — or air — came from. Since scientists know where most bacteria live, it’s possible to look at the microbes in an air sample and determine where that air came from. And once you know that, you can predict where the particles in the air came from as well – the same place the bacteria usually live.
In order to sample airborne bacteria in this remote ocean region, one of us headed out on the Australian Marine National Facility’s R/V Investigator for a six-week expedition. The weather was unruly and the waves were often white-capped, but for one to two days at a time, we sucked air from the bow of the ship through a filter that caught the airborne particles and bacteria. We then froze the filters to keep the bacterial DNA intact.
Ocean bacteria alone
In most ocean regions around the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where there is a lot of land, the air contains both marine and terrestrial particles. That’s what we expected to find down south.
With the frozen filters safely back at our lab in Colorado, we extracted DNA from the bacteria and sequenced it to determine what species we had caught. Much to our surprise, the bacteria were essentially all marine species that live in the Southern Ocean. We found almost no land-based bacteria.
If the bacteria were from the ocean, then so were the cloud-forming particles. This was the answer we were looking for.
Ice nucleating particles are very rare in seawater and marine particles are very good at forming liquid clouds. With mostly marine-based particles in the air, we’d expect the clouds to mostly be made of liquid droplets, which is what we observed. Since most models treat clouds in this region the same way they do clouds in the dustier Northern Hemisphere, it’s no wonder the models were off.
Going forward
Now that we know the summertime Southern Ocean clouds are being formed from purely marine particles, we need to figure out if the same is true in other seasons and at higher altitudes. The larger project, which involved planes as well as ships, has given atmospheric scientists a much better idea of the clouds both close to the ocean surface and high up in the atmosphere. The climate modelers among us are already incorporating these new data into their models and will hopefully have results to share soon.
Discovering that the airborne particles over the Southern Ocean are mostly coming from the ocean is a remarkable finding. It not only improves global climate models, it also means we confirmed the Southern Ocean is one of the most environmentally pristine regions on Earth — a place that has probably changed very little due to human activities. Our work will hopefully improve climate models, but has also given researchers a baseline for what a truly pristine marine environment looks like.
This man had a terrible stomach ache: and it took doctors 18 years to find the bizarre reason
After years of severe abdominal pain, the doctors made a shocking discovery!
Ma Vat Nhat, a Vietnamese man, was involved in a serious road accident in 1998 and underwent major surgery as a result. Ma Vat is now 54 years old and had no problems for years following the surgery, until he suddenly experienced severe abdominal pain.
Terrible stomach complaints
Ma Vat took heavy painkillers and other medication, however, nothing seemed to help; it just got worse. Doctors faced a mystery, no one knew what was causing the terrible pain. Ma Vat was then involved in another traffic accident and was taken back to hospital. The doctors took X-rays and made a shocking discovery …
Object in the abdomen
A pointed object was clearly visible in the photos. A pair of surgical scissors had been in his abdominal cavity for 18 years and his organs had grown completely around the scissors. Specialists were flown in and it took more than three hours to remove the scissors. The Vietnamese Ministry of Health has instructed the hospital to find out who was responsible for the major error. The director of the hospital in question has said that this will be difficult, because patient records are usually not kept for more than 15 years. What a bizarre story!
Vietnamese doctors remove pair of scissors colleagues left in patient for 18 years http://bit.ly/2i0LbuO
