Hobbies-Craft
Rock&Gem Magazine
Sri Lanka: The Gem Island
Ceylon, Sapphires & Serendipity
6 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Deinosuchus
An alligator no more!
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
ROCK & GEM FIELD GUIDE: Oregon Sunstone
Sunstone is the transparent, gem-quality variety of the mineral labradorite, a calcium-rich feldspar in the plagioclase series.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
The Amazing Mineral Magic Show
Wowing Kids & Adults Alike!
7 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Blue Opal
An Exotic & Common Gem Material
6 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
June: The Season for Weddings—and Volcanoes?
While geologists insist Earth is experiencing no more volcanic activity than usual, you wouldn't know it if examining headlines last June. In addition to prospects of an eruption off the Oregon coast, here are a few other headlines clipped from newspapers worldwide.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Using Obsidian to Track an Empire
Obsidian is volcanic glass.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Tracking Our Four-Footed Ancestors
The family history gets older & older!
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
TERROIR FIRMER
Volcanic Basalt Shakes Up Snow Capped Cider
5 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
The Strongest Evidence Yet for Extraterrestrial Life! Or not.
It certainly made for splashy headlines. Nikku Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge) and colleagues announced in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that they detected chemical signatures similar to those produced by phytoplankton on Earth, which release dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide into the atmosphere.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
A Fossil Mollusk? Sponge?
Just what IS this weird creature??
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Is Earth Leaking from the Middle?
Traditional wisdom holds that material contained within Earth's core is somewhat fixed and stays deep down.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Improved Alerts of Offshore Earthquakes
It is vital to get accurate readings of the place and time of offshore earthquakes, given their potential for spawning tsunamis and other extreme damage along highly populated coastlines prone to such quakes.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Taking the Measure of Sloths through Time
They're tiny compared to their past glory!
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Red Amber
One valuable doorstop!
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Birds Embraced the Arctic Almost Since Birds Began!
Many birds migrate to Arctic nesting grounds while others settle in year-round. As many as 280 species either visit or claim the Arctic as home.
1 min |
September 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
A Future Powered by Sodium
Over a year ago, I described research by Lei Ye and Huishen Peng (Fudan University, China) on efforts to develop a sodium battery that might give lithium batteries a run for the money if only their lab experiments could be scaled up to industrial levels.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Is A Volcanic Eruption Imminent off the Oregon Coast?
In articles, blogs and online posts, they've been saying it for months: the Axial Seamount is about to erupt! Perhaps by the time this article hits the press, it will have come true. But as I write, it remains wait-and-see, as if the volcano is teasing.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
THE LURE OF ULURU
In a classic example of understatement, most Australians simply call it “The Rock.” Rising 1,142 feet in awesome and solitary grandeur above the surrounding flat desert, it is one of the world’s best-known natural features. It’s also a sacred site representing 30,000 years of human habitation and an iconic image of Australia and that nation’s vast Outback. Previously called Ayers Rock, “The Rock” is today known as Uluru (ool-a-roo), a name of great antiquity that even predates the Ice Ages.
4 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
A Shift Noted in Earth's Hydrological Cycle
It's being described as \"an irreversible decline in soil moisture.\" Earth's hydrological cycle, it seems, has entered a new phase, and it is global in scale.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
FROM TEXTBOOK TO REAL LIFE
A High School Geology Buff’s Dream Classroom & Club
4 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Happy Birthday!
A new source of helium for party balloons!
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Mars Excitement & disappointment all at once!!
With Mars exploration, it's two steps forward, one step back.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
More Stories from Distant Ancestors Human
Everyone loves genealogy. The further back you trace, the better.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Was Myanmar's Great Quake a Supershear?
When a magnitude 7.7 earthquake ripped across Myanmar last March, 3,000 people were killed instantly and damage rippled into Thailand, where a high-rise building under construction collapsed.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Fluorite Ridge
Collecting Light Green & White Fluorite
9 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Toxic Metal Pollution in Soils
Mapping the risks
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
What Stone is That?
An excerpt from The Minerals Encyclopedia by Rupert Hochleitner, the Deputy Director of the Mineralogical State Collection of Munich since 1993, with a doctorate in mineralogy with an expertise in systematic mineralogy. (Firefly Books, 2022)
3 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
Spinosaurus Rebirth
A dino well-adapted to life in the water—or not.
1 min |
August 2025
Rock&Gem Magazine
An Iron Deposit of a Whole New Scale
A discovery in Australia is one for the history books!
1 min |