Sometimes George Harlow looks more like a medieval magician than the curator of gems and minerals at the American Museum of Natural History. Sweeping an ultraviolet light wand over a box of rocks in a darkened room at the museum, he ignites the stones-uncut rubies—in a burst of fiery red light that is otherworldly. "It's like Day-Glo colors," he says. "They are brighter than they should be. You look at them and say: 'Wow! Look at that red! What's going on?'"
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