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 …

A little over five years ago, the 25.59-carat pigeon-blood-red “Sunrise Ruby” rocked the auction world when it obliterated two auction records at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels sale in Geneva. The hammer price of $30.4 million exceeded Sotheby’s high estimate by more than $12 million and set a new auction mark for the largest sum ever paid for a …

Queen Elizabeth II is rarely seen in public without her favorite three-strand pearl necklace — a gift from her beloved father, King George VI, who passed away in 1952. What most Royal Family followers don't know is that the Queen actually owns three nearly identical pearl necklaces that she rotates freely. The future monarch was only 25 years old when …

An artisanal miner in Tanzania struck it rich last week when he sold two enormous tanzanite crystals for $3.4 million. Saniniu Laizer had discovered the crystals — one weighing 9.2kg (46,000 carats) and the other 5.8kg (29,000 carats) — in Tanzania's Manyara region, not far from the country's Merelani mining site. The two rough gems are believed to be the …

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, Swiss singer-songwriter Luca Hänni pursues the 110-carat girl of his dreams in his brand new release, “Diamant,” which means “diamond” in German. The official music video, which is performed in German and spotlights the talents of dancer Christina …