(September 2, 2014 at 2:07 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote: The largest diamonds are Earth are the Golden Jubilee diamond (545 carats) and the Greats Star of Africa diamond (530 carats).

BPM 37093 is a pulsating variable white dwarf star and is about 50 light years away from Earth and is about 2/3 the diameter. It's thought to be composed of mainly carbon and oxygen, with a hydrogen atmosphere. It was predicted in the '60s that as white dwarfs cool they would crystallize from the center out, and to test this hypothesis scientists studied BPM 37093's pulses to gain insight into it's inner structure. Based on their observations they estimated that BPM 37093 is about 90% crystallized, making it potentially the largest diamond ever found.

It's carat-weight is estimated to be 10 billion trillion trillion carats. That's 10 * 10^33 carats or a total crystalline mass of more than 5×10^29 kilograms.

It's nicknamed Lucy, after the Beatles song Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

50 light years is next door. Get a space ship.

(September 2, 2014 at 2:32 pm)Diablo Wrote: 50 light years is next door. Get a space ship.

I'm ready, let's go!!

(September 2, 2014 at 5:42 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote:

(September 2, 2014 at 2:32 pm)Diablo Wrote: 50 light years is next door. Get a space ship.

I'm ready, let's go!!

That'll do it. I think.

(September 1, 2014 at 8:15 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(August 28, 2014 at 8:59 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I'm pretty sure the fact behind his point is that the Muslims kept many of the discoveries of ancient Greece alive, and brought them to Europe -- not to mention, they imported the idea of zero from the Indians.

Not to mention keeping astronomy alive and well.

Duh on me, how could I have forgotten to mention that?

Thanks for the save, bud.

(September 2, 2014 at 2:15 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: Fun fact: Byblos, a city in Lebanon, is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world, having been settled between 8000 and 7000BC.

The world's earliest known monumental stone temple complex is Gobekli Tepe in turkey, and it is 3000 years older than that.

Even more interestingly, DNA analysis of wheat suggests wheat was first domesticated at almost exactly the time Gobekli Tepe was built, and the ancestor of all domestic wheat was a population of wild wheat in the hill 20 miles from Gobekli Tepe.

This makes it seem tantalizing possible Gobekli Tepe was not just a civic/religious center of one of the world's first settled agricultural peoples, But that it actually is THE First civic religious center of THE First settled agricultural people.

Everyone known Stonehenge, in Salisbury plains, right?
Just a mere 25km to the north, there is another henge, Avebury, which is Europe's largest neolithic stone circle. Not as imposing due to smaller rocks, but has a larger diameter of the circle, the road even goes through it!
And it makes a nice walk, kids can climb a few rocks... arguably, a better experience then at stonehenge!

Keith Richards admitted to taking his cremated fathers ashes, mixing them with cocaine and snorting him.

(September 2, 2014 at 5:44 pm)Diablo Wrote:

(September 2, 2014 at 5:42 pm)Clueless Morgan Wrote:

I'm ready, let's go!!

That'll do it. I think.

Are you crapping on my spaceship building skills? I'll have you know it took a whole ten minutes to find that box!!

Five people in three are mathematically illiterate.

(September 2, 2014 at 8:23 pm)CindysRain Wrote: Keith Richards admitted to taking his cremated fathers ashes, mixing them with cocaine and snorting him.

In Soviet Britain, cocaine cuts YOU.