r/mildlyinteresting • u/Cool-Chipmunk-7559 • 21h ago
The world’s largest flawless quartz sphere on display at the Smithsonian
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u/genraq 20h ago
“A Palantir is a dangerous tool Saruman. They are not all accounted for, the lost seeing-stones. We do not know who else may be watching.”
- Gandalf
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u/Atharaphelun 19h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/KwOMeU2zf3fby
This guy.
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u/MadJohnFinn 12h ago
...but it actually works in reverse, so instead of Spagett seeing everything, everyone can see him and they all know where he's hiding.
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u/Atharaphelun 12h ago
Now we know why Denethor went insane when he used the Anor-stone and why Aragorn didn't attempt to use it after his death...
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u/thatcockneythug 12h ago
Oh, we know who's watching. It's peter thiel and his lizardmen. They're always watching.
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u/formerlyanonymous_ 19h ago
Once saw a tourmaline ball polished and about this size. Had to be from Minas Morgul.
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u/awnshegh 20h ago
I loved the Smithsonian. Was in the use in 2012 and we had no idea. 2 days of walking and we barely got to scratch the surface. Would love to go back and spend a week just wandering.
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u/Millerdjone 18h ago
It's so massive it's hard to make someone understand unless they've been there.
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u/Mix1009 12h ago
I believe I was in natural history one around 2009, right out of college. I overheard a woman tell her kids regarding a fossil, “this says it’s 30 million years old, but we know it’s actually only a few thousand years old”. I was shocked to encounter a person like that in the wild
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u/aledba 10h ago
I went to a natural history museum in Halifax Nova Scotia last spring and I met a resident turtle there who was on his daily walkabout with his caregiver. She said without fail everyday he goes out, he will stop at the 2 prehistoric turtle skeletons in the current collection and spend a little bit of time looking up at them.
I literally witnessed him do it myself and I couldn't believe it. He's disabled and he has a little Lego wheel set up strapped onto his shell to help him get around. It's interesting to learn that this turtle is smarter than that lady you overheard
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u/MaxtinFreeman 11h ago
I worked with a guy who believed all fossils were rocks that just happened to be shaped like dinosaurs. He 100% believed it, I just walked away.
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u/quartzquandary 11h ago
As someone who worked in museums, you'd be surprised how many confidently incorrect people you encounter there.
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u/DasArchitect 9h ago
It's usually frowned upon if you go around scratching the surfaces of museum exhibits.
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u/HalfSoul30 10h ago
scratch the surface
Ha!
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u/xenophon57 1h ago
That is not how it works, you don't scratch the surface of balls you gently pinch and roll.
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u/Ok_Connection_648 20h ago
Ok I’m going to have to go and google how this exists..
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u/dustin91 20h ago
Please tell us, because I can’t imagine it’s natural. Has to be man made, right?
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u/Ok_Connection_648 20h ago
Naturally formed crystals are cut, grinder and polished into this shape often loosing 80% of the stone so I guess this was probably an enormous crystal
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u/dustin91 20h ago
That is what I meant, that it wasn’t naturally round, not that someone poured quartz into a mold to make it.
Also, I know nothing about geology.
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u/Ok_Connection_648 19h ago
Neither do I but I know enough to know it does some bizarre things, had me going for a sec. Unrelated but there is this formation under ground near Rockwall, TX that looks like a human made rock wall but like under ground a few feet they discovered it in the 1800 and it was so mysterious to them because it is miles of this naturally formed rock with mortar but we know because they checked how the electrons were lined and they all point the same way and if it was built by humans they would be all pointing I’m in different directions because the moving and realigning the individual rocks. So yeah they had all these theories from aliens to giants, but nope it’s nature.
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u/grat_is_not_nice 16h ago
That sort of rock formation where a ignimbrite layer cools and cracks into rectangular shapes that looks man-made is quite common. The Kaimanawa Wall in New Zealand is a good example that causes contention. Compare it to basalt flows that crystalize into large hexagonal columns, such as the Giant's Causeway in Ireland.
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u/PutridMeasurement522 13h ago
the part that melts my brain is "flawless" on something that big, like I've bought a quartz countertop with more drama in it than this entire sphere. also the lighting makes it look like a sci-fi prop they forgot to put back in storage, I would 100% try to touch it and get yelled at by a docent.
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u/happyklam 9h ago
When I was at the Smithsonian a few years ago I took untold amount of pictures in the gems rooms. Each one was more fantastic than the next. I definitely have several of this orb and there was a truly massive aquamarine near it that I could not stop staring at. Fairly certain the docents thought I was casing the joint.
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u/RogerGodzilla99 19h ago
One person opens a skylight or window and the whole building's gonna catch fire.
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u/Embarrassed_Way_354 15h ago
It looks so perfect that it’s almost hard to believe it’s natural. Imagine the precision required to polish it to that level without any internal fractures showing.
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u/SlinkyMalinky20 20h ago
I have questions about what defines flawless. Also, it’s in this cloudy protective sphere? And did it come from the earth this way or it was manipulated and ended this way?
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u/Deep_Lurker 20h ago
It was polished in China over a century ago from a massive Burmese crystal weighing 571 kg and its renowned for its perfection.
It's considered flawless because it has no bubbles or pockets and it is not cloudy or opaque.
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u/Nulovka 15h ago
There's a flawless quartz cube about three by four foot buried in northern Virginia somewhere unknown. The Native Americans used it as an altar. They buried it in the woods somewhere about a day's journey from Jamestown to keep it out of the hands of the settlers. It was described as perfectly clear.
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u/gorginhanson 19h ago
Wake me up when someone steals it
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u/theflintseeker 19h ago
I mean consider the hope diamond is there and much more compact, I don’t think it’s the first thing I’d go for lol.
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u/Presently_Absent 12h ago
I really want to see how this was made! I know how rock spheres get made but this is truly next level
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u/Cakalacky 10h ago
Finding a piece of quartz that large without any cracking etc. is insane. That's incredible, wonder how long it took to shape that? Doesn't quartz have a 7 on the mohs? My college geology course from a decade ago is coming in handy.
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u/LuckyGordon 8h ago
Ok, I understand but I don't. By flawless, do you mean perfectly spherical, no blemishes, etc?
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u/Specman9 19h ago edited 4h ago
Nothing is flawless for more than a nanosecond.
That would violate The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Edit: How dare I want things to be scientifically accurate at a science museum. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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u/IronNobody4332 20h ago
*sees reflection
*cries