Music Friday: 'Diamonds Ate the Radio' in Coldplay's 'Aliens' — a Song to Support Refugees

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you exciting new songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Coldplay introduces us to the curious phrase "diamonds ate the radio" with the July 14 release of "Aliens."

In the song's animated video, we see a family of aliens — rendered as armless orb-like beings — fleeing their war-torn planet. They dodge artillery fire while being pursued by giant spike-headed worms. The family ascends skyward to meet up with their spacecraft — and enter a secured portal just in the nick of time. The family travels to a new planet, but yearn to return home again.

The saga of the orb people is a metaphor for the dire circumstances currently faced by millions of migrants who have been forced to flee their homeland. Proceeds from "Aliens" will benefit the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), an international non-governmental organization that rescues migrants at sea.

Now, let's get back to the phrase that qualifies "Aliens" as a Music Friday tune. In the first two lines of the song, frontman Chris Martin sings, "We were just about to lose our home / Diamonds ate the radio."

At first blush, the diamond lyrics had us truly stumped. What could they possibly mean?

But, then we found a Reddit thread that focused on that exact question.

One Reddit contributor believes that "diamonds ate the radio" is a reference to artists being pressured to churn out overproduced music that conforms to a certain proven standard. A second Reddit user is confident the diamond reference is a nod to the ultimate RIAA sales threshold, where artists earn a diamond certification for an album that's shipped more than 10 million units.

Perhaps the writers of "Aliens" had both explanations in mind when they introduced a doomed future society that's not only under fire, but where only diamond-certified songs will get any airplay.

"Aliens" was released as the third track from Coldplay's new EP Kaleidoscope. Coldplay's pledge to donate proceeds from the song to MOAS received warm coverage from both RollingStone.com and Billboard.com. The Youtube video has been viewed more than 4.7 million times.

With more than 80 million records sold worldwide, Coldplay ranks as one of the world’s best-selling music groups. In December 2009, Rolling Stone readers ranked Coldplay as the fourth-best band of the 2000s. The group has earned five MTV Video Music Awards, seven Grammy Awards and 31 Grammy nominations.

Please check out the "Aliens" animated video. The lyrics are below if you'd like to sing along...

"Aliens"
Written by Brian Eno, Rik Simpson and Markus Dravs. Performed by Coldplay.

We were just about to lose our home
Diamonds ate the radio
Moving in the dead of night
We took photographs just some just so
History has some to know
We were moving at the speed of flight

Kids cry
If you want to
That's alright
If you want to
Hold me
Hold me tight

Just an alien

We were hovering without a home
Millions are UFO
Hovering in hope some scope tonight
Sees the light and says

Fly if you want to
That's alright
But if you want to
Call me
Call this line

Just an alien
Just an alien
Oh, we just want to get home again

Tell your leader
Sir or ma'am
We come in peace
We mean no harm
Somewhere out there
In the unknown
All the E.T.'s are phoning home
Watching my life
On the skyline
Crossing your eyes
For a lifetime

Just an alien
Moving target
Target movement
A patch, a corner
Of the spacetime
Just an alien
Turning toward it
Turning pages
Over Asia
Crossing ages
Just an alien
Oh, we just want to get home again

Credit: Screen captures via YouTube.com.

Lucara's 1,109-Carat Rough Diamond May Be Too Big to Sell; Will Mining Company Carve It Up?

When the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona failed to meet its reserve price at Sotheby's London in June of 2016, the disappointing result was the first signal that the massive diamond was just too big to sell. The final bid of $61 million fell short of the $70 million reserve price.

Now, 13 months later, diamond-industry insiders are buzzing about the likelihood that Canada-based Lucara Diamond Corp., which mined the stone in Botswana, will have to carve up the world's largest rough diamond in order to attain its maximum value.

Originally, Lucara and its chief executive William Lamb were hoping that Lesedi La Rona's buyer would forgo the opportunity to process the large rough into many smaller diamonds — and leave it in its natural state. Instead of working with members of the upper echelon of the diamond trade, Lamb decided to put the huge diamond on the international stage at Sotheby's. He was confident a deep-pocketed collector would appreciate the historical significance of the gem and essentially leave it alone.

"It's only the second stone recovered in the history of humanity over 1,000 carats," he told Reuters. "Why would you want to polish it? The stone in the rough form contains untold potential. As soon as you polish it into one solution, everything else is gone."

Cutting a rough diamond of this size is uncharted territory for the few elite diamond firms that have the finances and skill set to make a deal with Lucara. While an 1,109-carat rough diamond could yield the world's largest polished diamond — the current record is held by the 530.20-carat Great Star of Africa — the cutting process is fraught with risks and there are no guarantees.

"When is a diamond too big? I think we have found that when you go above 1,000 carats, it is too big — certainly from the aspect of analyzing the stones with the technology available," Panmure Gordon mining analyst Kieron Hodgson told Reuters.

Breaking the Lesedi La Rona into smaller, less risky parcels might generate more buyer interest. We already know that Lucara successfully sold the 813-carat "Constellation" to a Dubai trading company for a record $63 million, and Laurence Graff purchased the 374-carat broken shard from Lesedi La Rona for $17.5 million. All three diamonds were mined within three days of each other in 2015.

Holding onto the diamond for too long may have a negative effect on Lucara's potential payday. New technology employed by the world's largest diamond mining companies has resulted in the recovery of many more 100-carat-plus stones. Previously, the sorting machines would fracture the largest crystals instead of identifying and preserving them.

It may be only a matter of time before the next 1,000-carat diamond is revealed to the world. If and when that happens, the novelty connected to Lesedi La Rona's extraordinary size may be lost, along with some of its value.

Credits: Images courtesy of Sotheby’s.

52 Years Ago: Gold's Amazing Properties Earns It a Trip With NASA to The Final Frontier

When astronaut Edward H. White II became the first American to step outside his spacecraft and let go, the visor of his helmet was plated with an ultra-thin layer of gold to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the sun. If you look closely at the image below, you'll also notice that his 25-foot lifeline back to the Gemini IV spacecraft was wrapped in gold tape.

It was 1965 and scientists at NASA depended on gold's amazing characteristics to ensure a safe and successful mission. Gold is highly reflective of heat and light, so NASA scientists coated the visors with a gold layer so thin — 0.000002 inches — that astronauts could see through it.

While gold was a largely unsung hero of America's early space program, man's infatuation with this precious metal can be traced back 6,000 years to the ancient Thracian civilization. Worked-gold objects made around 4000 BC were discovered at a burial site near Varna, Bulgaria.

Despite being enchantingly beautiful, gold demonstrates a wide range of extraordinary properties — qualities well known to the jewelry, electronics, medical and dental industries.

For instance, gold is nature's most malleable metal. That means that it can be pounded so thin that one ounce of gold could cover about 100 square feet of a surface. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) calculated that it would take 576 ounces (or just 36 pounds) of gold to completely cover a football field.

Gold leaf typically measures 0.18 microns in thickness (about 7 millionths of an inch), and according to AMNH, a stack of 7,055 sheets would be no thicker than the width of a dime.

Gold is also ductile, which means that it can be made into the thinnest wire. The AMNH notes that one ounce of gold can be drawn into 50 miles of wire, five microns thick.

Of all the gold mined this year, expect 78% of it to be made into fine jewelry. Other industries consume about 12%, and the remaining 10% is supplied to financial institutions. Jewelry designers and manufacturers love to use gold because of its high luster, its ability to be cast into shapes, drawn into wires and hammered into sheets. It possesses a beautiful golden color, but also can be alloyed into many hues, including pink, white and green. And, what's more, it will never tarnish.

Fun fact: The largest accumulation of gold lies 80 feet below street level at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The vault houses $147 billion in gold bullion — a bounty that weighs a staggering 5,000 metric tons.

Credit: Image by NASA/James McDivitt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.