Creating opals:  Opals in months—not millions of years!

[Opals in months—not millions of years! by Andrew A. Snelling] "Opals have fascinated people for centuries. As early as the first century AD, the Roman Pliny wrote of opals:  ‘In them you shall see the living fire of ruby, the glorious purple of the amethyst, the sea-green of the emerald all glittering together in an incredible mixture of light.’ 

Mark Antony loved them, and is thought to have assaulted a senator to get a particularly nice one. Napoleon presented Josephine with ‘The Burning of Troy’, a magnificent red example. Shakespeare called them ‘that miracle and queen of gems’, and Queen Victoria of Great Britain made the new discoveries from far-off Australia a fashion necessity.

Prized for their vivid hues, Australia’s renowned precious opals command retail prices from US$5 to $3,000 per carat, depending on quality. The finest opals have become more expensive than many other gems, and Australia is responsible for practically all of the world’s supply. (Mexico is the only other significant producer.) Coober Pedy, together with Andamooka and Mintabie, all in South Australia, account for approximately 70 percent of total world production. However, since 1988 the value of production from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, with its famed high-quality black opal, has outstripped the South Australian fields.

The opals are said to have formed millions of years ago (30 million years ago at Coober Pedy), although the host rocks are all claimed to be more than 65–70 million years old. And surprising as it may seem, the ingredients of opal are commonplace stuff. Water in the ground carrying dissolved silica (similar to the glass in windows) is said to have seeped through beds of sand and grit, where the silica particles are deposited in cracks. As the water subsequently evaporated, the silica particles became ‘cemented’ together to form the opal. Light bending around the silica produces the variety of glowing colours.

Fossils made of opal

Even fossils found in the host rocks have not escaped the percolating silica-rich groundwaters. Occasionally, bones, seashells and seed pods are found fossilized by having been ‘turned’ into opal. Perhaps the most famous example in recent years is ‘Eric’ the pliosaur (a marine reptile), which was the subject of high-profile public fund-raising by The Australian Museum in Sydney in order to purchase these opalized bones from the Coober Pedy miner who found them in 1987. ‘Eric’ is said to be about 100 million years old. No wonder then, in most people’s minds, because of these claimed time scales, and because of the almost universal perception/indoctrination that geological processes are almost always slow and gradual, opals ‘must’ have taken a long time to form in the ground.

‘Not so’, says Len Cram, a Lightning Ridge ‘bush’ scientist who earned his Ph.D. for his opal research..." Full text:  Creating Opals:  Opals in months—not millions of years! by Andrew A. Snelling http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v17/n1/opals

Response to comment [from an atheist]:  [Misdirecting threads bringing up irrelevant information] "I knew we were a major supplier of opals, but not that major...I'm a bit confused though..."

That's because this thread is about the possibility that dingoes ate your baby. Hos 2:18.

Creating opals: Opals in months—not millions of years!