Two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak recently popped the question to his TV host girlfriend, Mia Atkins, with a dazzling pear-shaped diamond engagement ring. The surprise proposal took place on California's picturesque Catalina Island. Photos and videos on the couple's respective Instagram pages captured the exciting moment when Mikulak dropped to one knee. On Atkin's Instagram page, a quick clip treated her …

Sometimes good fortune comes down to being in the right place at the right time. It's called "serendipity" and that's the name Dr. Mindy Pomtree gave to the 6.39-carat, gem-quality diamond she plucked from the ground at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, AR. About the size of a pumpkin seed, the Serendipity is, by far, the largest diamond …

Six custom-cut rubies and an equal number of custom-cut sapphires make up the swooping "DC" logo on the 2019 championship rings of the WNBA's Washington Mystics. In total, the innovative and symbolic 10-karat gold rings shimmer with 120 diamonds, 35 rubies and 23 sapphires for a combined gemstone weight of 9 carats. The rings, which tell a story of a …

An exquisite 37.8-carat emerald once possessed by the royal rulers of Baroda is the next stop on our virtual tour of the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection. The Chalk Emerald is so special, in fact, that it is the singular occupant of a wall case titled "A Royal Legacy" on the second floor of the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, …

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you throwback tunes with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, 27-time Grammy winner Alison Krauss delivers her second-person rendition of “I’m Just a Country Boy,” a song originally released by Harry Belafonte in 1954. In Krauss’s 2007 version — “You’re Just a Country Boy” — she tells the …

Fossils preserved within opals on the surface of Mars could prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. On July 20, NASA will send the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover on a 72-million-mile journey to explore the surface of the Red Planet. In mid-February 2021, the rover will begin collecting samples at the Jezero crater, which contains fields of opaline silica, better known …

Gina Bopp was so certain that her diamond engagement ring had been swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean that she immediately bought a faux version on Amazon. The Queens, NY, woman had been enjoying the surf at Rockaway Beach on Monday, June 29, when the young son of one of her friends got caught by a wave. "So, I went …

New smoking-gun evidence seems to confirm the theory that the world's most famous diamonds — such as the 45-carat Hope and the 3,106-carat Cullinan — have "super-deep" origins, according to Dr. Evan Smith of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), who presented his findings to geochemists at the recent Goldschmidt Conference. Smaller diamonds are known to materialize under high pressure …

While working the search field at Crater of Diamonds State Park, Beatrice Watkins joked to her two young granddaughters that their future husbands would need to revisit the site to find diamonds for their wedding rings. What the 56-year-old Mena, Ark., resident didn't realize at the time is that she had already scored the park's biggest diamond of 2020, a …

A pair of scientists from The University of Hong Kong have developed an autonomous "hunter drone" that can survey wide landscapes and identify valuable gemstone targets using a scanning laser. The drone flies at night and emits a powerful beam that causes fluorescent items on the surface of the ground to glow. The drone was originally intended to look for fossil …