A $300 Million Star (Sapphire) Is Born

A massive purple star sapphire has been unearthed in Sri Lanka. It is the largest gem of its type ever discovered. 

The spherical stone is valued between $300 million and $400 million. It was first found in Rathnapura, the island nation’s “city of gems,” in 2023. The team of owners wishes to remain anonymous. They named the sapphire “Star of Pure Land.” The name echoes the titles of other famous gemstones. None of those have been quite as large.    

Weighing in at 3,563 carats (1 carat = ⅕ of a gram), the Star of Pure Land was recently certified by gemologists as the biggest star sapphire of any color in the world. It is about the size of a billiard ball. The next largest is the 1,404-carat Star of Adam. It's a blue star sapphire also found in Rathnapura in 2016. The Star of Pure Land is also drawing attention for its near-perfect clarity.  

“This is the largest purple star sapphire of its kind,” Ashan Amarasinghe told The Associated Press. He's a gemologist. “(It) shows a well-defined asterism. It has six rays asterism. That’s something special out of all the other stones.”  

Asterism is the term for a star pattern visible inside a gem. It is caused by the inclusion of rutile, a form of the element titanium. If rutile is present while a gem is formed under immense pressure over millions of years, it will naturally branch out through the gemstone. The branches form starlike points. 

Many of the world’s largest and most valuable gemstones have come from Rathnapura. Billions of years ago, the region was highly volcanic. When deposits of aluminum oxide in magma cool and compress over thousands of years, they can form gemstones. The type of gem it forms depends upon other elements in the magma. Iron and cobalt yield a blue or purple sapphire. Chromium tinges the aluminum oxide bright red. Those gems are known as rubies.   

Reflect: What makes something from nature feel valuable or special to you?

Gif of Star of Pure Land purple star sapphire courtesy Starofpureland.com.