History World

CANDI PRAMBANAN

Jewelry Blue

Blue Sapphire Ring

Diamond Selection

Shiny Diamond

Diamond Selection

Shiny Diamond

Diamond Selection

Shiny Diamond

Diamond Selection

Diamond

If you are looking to purchase the perfect diamond studs and give them as a special gift to that special someone on your list for this new 2008 year, consider a fabulous pair of diamond stud earrings. Diamonds have long been considered one of the best gifts to give someone and stud earrings are a classic piece of jewelry. Over the years, they have become a great gift for both males and females. When it comes to diamond stud earrings, there are many great choices. You can find earrings to suit every taste and style. Here are a few of James Allen's exquisite diamond studs:

Diamond Selection

Diamond

If you are looking to purchase the perfect diamond studs and give them as a special gift to that special someone on your list for this new 2008 year, consider a fabulous pair of diamond stud earrings. Diamonds have long been considered one of the best gifts to give someone and stud earrings are a classic piece of jewelry. Over the years, they have become a great gift for both males and females. When it comes to diamond stud earrings, there are many great choices. You can find earrings to suit every taste and style. Here are a few of James Allen's exquisite diamond studs:

White Dwarf Stars: Like a Diamond in the Sky

Just in time for Valentine's Day, astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star with a very special center. This star would truly be the gift for the person who has everything: a celestial diamond in the sky!

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!" says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

The reason this star, with the obscure designation of BPM 37093 is so special to astronomers is that it has aided them in proving a theory held for decades: that white dwarf stars cool and crystallize into carbon, a giant diamond.

Astronomers say the star has a diameter of 2,500 miles and weighs in at an astonishing five million, trillion, trillion pounds. That would make the diamond core ten billion, trillion, trillion carats! The largest gem-quality diamond yet found on Earth was the 3,106-carat "Cullinan" discovered in 1905. The 530-carat "Star of Africa" in the British crown jewels was cut from it.

The star is located in the constellation Centaurus and is about fifty light years distant (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.)

There are many kinds of stars in the cosmos. The Sun is part of a group of stars called main sequence stars, and most of these end their lives as white dwarves.

The stars burn up all their hydrogen and then begin to expand into red giant stars. Red giants are extremely large. If our Sun was a red giant, it would extend well beyond the orbit of Mars, swallowing the Earth in it's atmosphere!

The stars continue fusing elements until it loses its shell of gases, leaving behind a hot core of about 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the star begins to cool. The star pulsates as it burns helium in fusion reactions creating heavier and heavier elements until at the very end there is carbon and a very small amount of oxygen. A star will spend billions of years in this phase.

The problem with proving the theory about the crystallization is that by the time the star has crystallized, it is no longer pulsating and is so cool that they are impossible to detect. But BPM 37093 is the most massive known dwarf star. Because it is so massive, the star is crystallizing on the inside while light and sound continue to pulsate from the surface.

"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth. We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.

The same fate awaits our own Sun. In about five billion years, our Sun will use up it's hydrogen, expand into a red giant and at last become a white dwarf star. A few billion years after that, our Sun will have cooled and the core crystallized into a diamond that is truly forever.

A Guide to Understanding Diamonds and GIA Grading

The State Library of Western Australia has new displays for Spring, all around the theme of diamonds. These displays are a great chance to see treasures from our stack and rare book rooms, giving you an idea of some of the items we have in our collection. You’ll also learn some interesting things!

We have one display for each of our floors, located near the lifts.

Ground Floor: ‘I can’t say no to diamonds’ is an elegant display of materials about jewellers of renown.

1st floor: ‘Romancing the stone: Diamonds as the icons of romance’ is a sassy yet sweet look at the connection between diamonds and romance.

2nd floor: ‘Elgar’s diamonds’ is an interesting take on the theme, with a fabulous array of materials on the life and works of Edward Elgar, who composed a piece for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

3rd floor: ‘The Carnot Bay Diamond Mystery’ is a display about a strange saga in Western Australia history. In 1942, a plane bearing millions of dollars of diamonds was shot down by Japanese bombers near Broome. A beachcomber found the diamonds and shared them among his friends. About half of the diamonds were recovered and he stood trial for their theft. He was acquitted; the rest of the diamonds have never – officially – been found.

A Guide to Understanding Diamonds and GIA Grading Reports

GIA wants you to understand exactly what you’re buying when shopping for your diamond. As creators of the 4Cs and the International Diamond Grading System™, GIA set the standards for diamond grading and has been helping consumers make educated diamond buying decisions for over 50 years.

GIA’s D-to-Z color-grading scale, Flawless-to-I3 clarity-grading scale, and Excellent-to-Poor cut-grading scale are all recognized by gem and jewelry professionals everywhere. And, by extension, the GIA Diamond Grading Report, Diamond Dossier®, and Gemological Identification Report are considered to be the world’s premier evaluations of gem quality and authenticity.