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06/26/12 Caltech Scientists Find New Primitive Mineral in Meteorite [Credit: Chi Ma / Caltech] "PASADENA, Calif.—In 1969, an exploding fireball tore through the sky over Mexico, scattering thousands of pieces of meteorite across the state of Chihuahua. More than 40 years later, the Allende mete...

Conch pearls are some of the most expensive pearls out there due to their rarity, so this is appalling. New Pearl Treatment Causes Permanent Damage, Says Lab By Rob Bates, Senior Editor - Posted on September 11, 2013 " The trade is being warned to be on the lookout for a new pearl coating treat...

"This guarantee is limited to the ExCel enhancement only and specifically excludes cracking, natural defects or other damage to the gemstone." Excluding natural defects? Aren't they supposedly filled already with that stuff? Glass treatment: There is now a persistent rumor about treatment...

I have seen some Fanta orange opals on the site and suspected they were treated, and apparently they were. This blog discusses the orange opals, and says sugaring turns them orange, but I've only heard of sugaring on dark opals to make them black, so maybe it's possible for orange to be an early sta...

Apparently they're finding waterglass and fibers in rough now, in quite a few types of gemstones. Are we surprised? NOT!

Glass materials as indicators of treatments

http://www.schoolofgemology.com/Newslet ... atment.pdf

Sigh, there's never an end to the reading I have to do. For what it's worth I looked at and decided not to buy a CiGem unit. Sadly, one gets what one pays for in this life and this unit does not seem to me to be a serious investigative tool. I started with CiGem in my own search for a spectrometer,...

Gemlab's final 2012 newsletter touches on some new gemstone treatments I hadn't even heard of before. It's getting to the point where the neighborhood gemologist won't be able to tell if stones are treated without investing in very expensive equipment. For anyone going to Tucson who wants the GL Gem...

Press Release Contact: Robert James International School of Gemology San Antonio TX 78278 Phone 210 877 5816 Fax 210 877 5496 isg@schoolofgemology.com GemstoneTreatmentReport.com website becomes free information resource for gemstone industry. "ISG opens the GTR database to assist the world wi...

Another one to watch out for. I pulled this from another forum I'm on: "They are filling the emeralds with ExCel polymer and offering a lifetime guarantee against change. The Guarantee states: Eternity Natural Emerald's® ExCelT is a stable process for enhancing the clarity of emeralds. Emeralds...

More from Ron's site, that's well worth the read: COUNTING FISSURES TO DETERMINE THE DEGREE OF ENHANCEMENT IN EMERALDS "After counting fissures on hundreds of emeralds, a close relationship (1:1) was found between surface-reaching fissures and the degree of face-up clarity enhancement..." m