OMG SHINY! - Moldavite

 
A GRRRRAAAIILL?! 

We end a week of shiny things with the Holy Grail of all rocks. No, seriously; before the Holy Grail was ever considered a cup, the Druids were using that term to describe a very unusual rock that may or may not have been magic. All they knew was that moldavite came from outer space and that it was therefore awesome.

Yes, moldavite, the green stone up there, has similar pockmarks as meteorites. It was first classified as an igneous rock (i.e. a rock made by volcanic activity), but this was later proven false. Moldavite is now definitely considered a tektite - a glassy rock formed by the impact of a meteor upon the Earth's surface.

Most moldavite can be traced to one meteorite that crashed 15 million years ago in western Bavaria, an event that created a giant-ass hole called the "Nördlinger Ries" in Bavaria, Germany. Moldavite from this event can be found in Bavaria, other parts of Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, and, true to its name, the Republic of Moldova. Hardcore moldavite fanatics will tell you that, if it is NOT from Europe, it is probably a fake.

That last paragraph is all that science knows for sure. From then on, one has to look into New Age crackpot websites about moldavite's magical properties. Nearly every page will mention that it is, somehow, linked to the Christian Holy Grail, in part because it is the only green stone to ever fall from the sky. They are not the only ones to think that this weird space rock is something special; as stated earlier, the Druids thought it was cool, too.

As with various animal parts in Chinese medicine, moldavite is almost a panacea, except that it works more on the soul than on the body. Many people describe feeling a "vibe" when holding moldavite, regardless of how much they believe in the supernatural. Due to moldavite's rarity and mystical properties, even small 'flowers' of moldavite range into the hundreds of USD.

Or maybe you will just have to know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow to get your hands on some real moldavite. We do not know anything about swallows carrying coconuts, either, so if anybody asks, we're listening to Lady Gaga and our telephone's kinda busy.

Tomorrow: A drug that can turn humans into zombies?! We'll see about that...

OMG SHINY! - Watermelon Tourmaline.

If you were ever a kid -and you were, admit it- you have seen 'rainbow' lollipops, popsicles, and other forms of tooth rot layered with colorful bands. This barrage of artificial colors and/or flavors is extremely appealing to humans, possibly because we are among the few mammals (yes, I'm ragging on mammals during SHINY WEEK) able to see color. Plus, sugar is sugar.

Disco sticks?

 Nature has beaten humanity to the 'banded things that should not be' punch yet again. Imagine how easily one could mistake this stone for a particularly decorative piece of rock candy:

All one would have to do is wrap that in plastic and slap a "watermelon" flavor label on it. Scientists have not been stupid enough to do the former, in part because they would get sued, but they do call that crystal "watermelon tourmaline." Gee, I wonder why?

Tourmaline contains boron, silicon, and any number of trace elements. It was first discovered in Sri Lanka and brought to Europe. We presume that it was colorful tourmaline like the watermelon specimen above; tourmaline was actually a lot more common than Europe thought it was for one simple reason.



Not all tourmaline is as pretty as the watermelon slice up there. Ninety-five percent of tourmaline is bland. Very bland. The most common type of tourmaline, schorl (which sounds like something out of a RPG), is gray, only slightly shiny, and makes Rice Krispies seem exciting. Other species of tourmaline are far more colorful. Most of them can be found in Brazil.



C'mon, Willy Wonka, make tourmaline candy. While you're at it, agates and several other stones would make great gummi slices, and snowflake obsidian would make excellent licorice. Take rock candy to a whole new level!

OMG SHINY! - Amber.

In Jurassic Park, many a giant thunderlizard was brought back from the stony grave using ancient dinosaur blood. The idea was that mosquitoes preserved in amber would have well-preserved dinosaur blood, and thus DNA viable for cloning, in their bodies. This is bull; the DNA would likely be mixed with the blood of several other animals, including the mosquito herself. Even with frogs to fill in the gaps, there would have been more problems with resurrecting dinosaurs via mosquitoes than just the chaos theory. 

Now for the burning question: How did a bug get into a stone in the first place?



Like pearls, amber has an organic source: Tree resin (not sap). Amber, which has been used in jewelry and folk medicine since the Neolithic, is really fossilized tree resin. Besides being a valuable find for both science and fashion, amber has also been used as perfume; if your amber piece does not give off the scent of Pine-Sol when burned, it's fake (and probably smells a lot nastier).

Amber usually comes from trees similar to either the Australian Agathis evergreens or American Hymenea legumes. Although this may look restrictive, bear in mind that Mesozoic botanical distribution was very different from what it is today. Amber can be found in many sediments from when dinosaurs roamed the earth, dating from the Jurassic to Cretaceous and not giving a flip about where its relatives wound up. (There are quite a few earlier amber deposits, but nobody knows what strange plants made them. They are nonetheless valuable scientific discoveries.) Today, most (around 90%) of the world's extractable amber can be found in Russia and the Dominican Republic (one of the only sources of blue amber).





 In Soviet Russia, amber discovers you!

Real amber usually yields interesting finds. The level of preservation via amber is exceptional; liquid water and whole animals have been found in amber. Amber thus allows paleontologists to get a better look at ecology during the time of the dinosaurs; remember, microfauna, flora, and insects are huge in ecosystems. One bad mosquito bite could have killed Barney (not that we would know anything about that).



Ever since people have been picking up shiny stones, amber has been given special treatment. It has been used as jewelry, perfumes, medicine, and even as a flavoring in liquor. Pliny the Elder was one of the first to theorize that amber had once been liquid; given that there are many ways to return amber to a liquid state, there should be no surprises that the thought was floating around.

Even though amber is very cool and this entry only scratches the surface of its awesomeness, it still cannot resurrect dinosaurs. Don't hold your breath on that one...oh, and using frogs instead of birds to fill in the gaps in dino DNA was stupid, too.

Unless it was -this- frog. No, wait, that's still stupid.

OMG SHINY! - Hematite.

Less spectacular than peacock ore but slightly more interesting is a metallic stone called hematite. Chances are that you have seen this black, shiny stone on jewelry. In that setting, it resembles something between a rock and a metal (as it should - the formula for hematite is Fe2O3, iron and oxygen).

Wait, iron and oxygen? Doesn't that usually lead to rust?



Ohhh yes. The name "hematite" comes from the Greek word for "blood."All hematite has at least one rust-red streak in it, thus the colorful association. The element iron makes both hematite and human blood red; what a fitting name, science!

Don't let the shiny metallic appearance fool you; hematite has been used for rich red coloration throughout much of human history. Hematite-rich clay, called ochre, has been used to turn things red since the idea of "dye" first entered human consciousness. The earliest use of a hematite compound as a pigment goes back to the Middle Stone Age. Hematite's the real bloodstone - fuck that other bloodstone that's supposedly the birthstone for March.


"Christmas tree stone" should be just as valid.

The crazy thing: Hematite is a waste product. It is very easy to get hematite via simple chemistry (such as steelwork). It is a common by-product in iron mines as well. Nobody deliberately makes hematite; nobody really has to.

OMG SHINY! - Peacock Ore.

I wanna see your...

It finally happened: I found a pop song that disgusted me to the core of my very being. Katy Perry was tolerable before I heard "Peacock;" put bluntly, she has turned a bird forever associated with majesty and divinity into an innuendo on par with the common chicken. Seriously, Katy Perry, what did peacocks ever do to you?

Peacock ore, however, does not ruin the peacock's majesty:

Peacock ore, AKA bornite, is a sulfide with the chemical formula Cu5FeS4 - that is, it contains both copper and iron, both very colorful minerals in their own rights. Iron usually gives things a reddish hue (but be careful-other things can do this, too); copper usually gives something a blue-green color. The result when they're mixed is a copper ore with one of the prettiest lusters of any industrial stone out there.



Bornite is around 63% copper, the single most colorful metal on the planet. This makes it a valuable ore for, well, anyone interested in working with copper. It is also popular for jewelry despite its industrial uses. (See tomorrow's entry for yet another extremely common ore used in jewelry.) It is also used in crystal mysticism to inspire and amplify the crown chakra (associated with the color purple). The stone keeps the peacock's spirit, at least.

Peacock ore does the bird justice. Keep Katy Perry's song away from me.

OMG SHINY! - Pearls.

Speaking of precious, colorless shiny things...



Diamonds and pearls are often placed alongside each other even though they are hardly related stones. They are both shiny, colorless, rare gems that can be used to denote something valuable. Despite this parallel usage, pearls are very different from diamonds in a number of ways.


That did not stop Nintendo.

A pearl is formed when an irritant - an overlarge particle, parasite, something organic and annoying - enters the shell of a bivalve (usually some type of oyster). The mantle of the mollusk releases a mixture of calcium carbonates and conchiolin (three guesses where that name came from) to envelop the irritant in shiny nacre (which makes up mother-of-pearl). When you get a pearl, it's almost like receiving a particularly pretty mollusk scab.

There are three types of pearls to be aware of: Cultured, natural, and, of course, fakes. The differences between natural and cultured pearls require either cutting the pearl or sending it to a gemologist to be x-rayed. Natural pearls will show rings akin to a tree's growth rings - layers upon layers of nacre applied upon a pesky parasite - while cultured pearls will be solid in the center.

Fakes can be distinguished by a number of (expensive) testing methods. X-rays and trips to experienced gemologists will work, yes, but far cheaper home testing methods include holding the pearls in sunlight (natural pearls won't match colors and have imperfections) and the rather unreliable method of feeling the gritty nacre in between one's teeth.

There are even more distinctions, such as whether the pearl in question came from a fresh- or saltwater mollusk, as well as different types such as the keshi pearls (cultured, but occur semi-randomly). A really good jeweler will know if a pearl falls under one of these other classifications; if they can name the exact species of mollusk the pearl came from, they deserve a raise.

Natural pearls are indeed rare. The value is determined by factors such as size, iridescence, shape and color. Black pearls are particularly valuable; there is no good way to produce them in a culture, and even with the specific requirements met, something tends to go wrong in the process. In short, nature says no.


Jack Sparrow says yes.

Then there are pearls that are not really pearls by most people's standards. They are formed the same way that real pearls are (that is, by an annoyed mollusk), but usually lack the luster and other desirable properties of gem-quality pearls. Many types of mollusks make "calcareous concretions;" some conches, for example, produce pink 'pearls' of this nature. The most famous of these concretions is the Pearl of Lao Tzu; if that name sounds familiar, it's because this hardened emu dropping pearl came from a giant clam.

It still looks like a turd to me.

OMG SHINY! - Diamonds.

We start the week of shiny things with the biggest, fanciest, hardest shiny thing known to man: DIAMONDS!



Good diamonds are worth a fortune, a girl's best friend, one of the most common engagement ring stones, the birthstone for the month of April, and so on. These commonly-known diamond tidbits only scratch the surface of the hardest stone known to man. There is much, much more to diamonds than meets the eye, although a diamond's unique fire and clarity is most of its price.

HULK DIAMOND SMASH!

Besides the usual clear color, diamonds can come in any hue of the rainbow. There are even black diamonds like the one above. All sorts of lore accompanies diamonds of different colors; for example, black "carbonado" diamonds may have come from space, and the Great Hope Diamond is rumored to be cursed.



The Great Hope Diamond in particular illustrates a relatively-unknown property of diamonds: They glow in blacklight. In particular, the Hope Diamond, which looks blue in normal light, turns red-orange when placed in ultraviolet light. The exact color depends on trace elements within the diamond. Given that diamonds are usually thought of as a clear stone, it was quite a shocker to see a whole butterfly of multicolored diamonds in the Field Museum! (No, you cannot go see it- the exhibit was temporary.) This property can be used to determine whether a diamond is real or not; a real diamond should look like hippie gear under blacklight.

Or an eye, staring into your soul and waiting to curse you.

The truth is, however, that diamonds are carbon. Just carbon (trace amounts of other elements not withstanding). Carbon is an extremely common element that forms the basis for all life on Earth (thus "carbon-based lifeforms"). Other examples of pure carbon include charcoal and graphite, AKA pencil 'lead.' Notice how none of the nouns except "diamond" in this paragraph fall under the category of "hardest thing around."

Why not?

Basically, it depends on how the carbon atoms are arranged. The crystal structure of a diamond is what provides its literally adamantine hardness, luster, 'fire,' thermal conductivity, and other unique properties. To form this unique crystal requires high pressure and relatively low temperatures; otherwise, the diamond will instead become another sort of carbon. There are ways to transform diamond into graphite, but unless you happen to be an alchemist and are able to reverse it quickly, this rather extreme process (involving a vacuum and temperatures above 1,700 degrees C) is not recommended.


You must be more badass than this to turn diamonds into graphite. Seriously, that's just a dick move.

OMG SHINY! - A Week of Rocks.

Every day, I make it my personal mission to show you all something stunning. Sometimes it's a plant; sometimes it's an animal; sometimes it's neither here nor there, leaving scientists very confused as to exactly what box it fits into. One virus has gotten an entry, and there is still debate over whether viruses are alive or not. I have never done a post on something that was definitely not alive. 

"OMG SHINY!" week will consist entirely of awesome things that are definitely not alive. Rocks, stones and worse-than-senseless things will make up all of this week's posts. The good news is that they will be colorful, interesting shiny rocks that you will probably want to put on your finger when all is said and done.


This loses its luster pretty quickly, actually. 

Wow. I can't believe I've finally sunk to the level of doing pet rocks.