Hubble Telescope, NASA/ESA/J. Maíz Apellániz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain)
OUTTA THIS WORLD
Far Out Gemstones and Champagne, Too
“Another trip around the sun,” is a trendy way of saying it’s your birthday on social media, we earthlings who try to mark time in an inherently fluid passing of celestial bodies far beyond our control, and barely within our understanding.
Space is our perennial place to dream and enquire as humans, our look outside and inside ourselves. Astronomers have great tools to do so, with the James Webb Telescope, and the recently constructed Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. Astrologers analyze the planets more subjectively, with astrologers such as Susan Miller providing insight precise enough to put down any naysayer.
From a unique celestial dome created by Van Cleef & Arpels, to exoplanets raining spectacular gemstones, and champagne conceived by Mumm to be popped in zero-gravity – it’s time to get outta this world.
Earth, Carbon, Magma…and Diamonds
Diamonds are crystallized carbon, an element that is our earthly building block. Carbon is all around planet earth and inside of it, with ninety percent of Earth’s mantle and core made of carbon. While gemstones are formed inside Earth’s crust, diamonds are much older and deeper to Earth, first formed much deeper inside its upper mantle.
Many diamonds are more than 1 billion years old, at least many millions. During tectonic shift and through volcanic action, they are whisked closer to the surface with magma, where eventually they are mined.
“The pattern of diamond eruptions is cyclical, mimicking the rhythm of the supercontinents, which assemble and break up in a repeated pattern over time…the process causes diamonds to suddenly erupt, having spent millions – or billions – of years stashed away 150 kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface,” Thomas Gernon, Professor of Earth Sciences and Principal Research Fellow at the University of Southampton.
Rough diamond and carbon. The Lesotho Legend Diamond, at 910 carats, eventually cut into 67 stones in Anvers and mounted on 25 High Jewelry pieces at Van Cleef & Arpels. © Ilan Taché
The Cosmos, by Van Cleef & Arpels
Call it a spectacular music box, a kinetic objet d’art, or one of the best only-one-in-the-world collector’s pieces to debut in 2025. The Van Cleef & Arpels Planétarium Automaton puts the celestial vault in jeweled movement.
Created within a dedicated workshop at the Center of Excellence for Art Mechanics in Sainte-Croix, the manual-winding mechanical movement includes a planetarium and 11 other modules such as a perpetual calendar. Earth is represented by green jasper adorned with two tones of sapphires; Venus appears in rose quartz, Mercury in chalcedony. The upper dome is shown here for a closer view of the planets; its full movement can be seen here.
The piece itself travels around Earth, showing in timely events: in 2025 and into 2026, the piece exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History in Cosmic Splendor: Jewelry from the Collections of Van Cleef & Arpels, also at the West Bund Dome Art Center in Shanghai, and during Dubai Watch Week alongside the Maison’s Planetarium inspired mechanical timepieces.
The Planetarium Automaton travels to Hong Kong in the ‘Poetry of Time’ exhibition in the Central Ferry Pier 4, January 24th through February 8th, 2026.
Wait, but first—champagne.
The ground-breaking champagne creation, Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar, allows astronauts and other space travelers to enjoy champagne in the challenging surroundings of zero gravity. The hard part is getting the liquid out of the bottle.
Made in collaboration with Spade a Paris-based company designing objects for use in space, the high-tech bottle uses the champagne’s gas to expel the liquid into a ring-shaped frame, where it is concentrated into a droplet of bubbles. It can then be passed to someone and released into the air, where it floats until gathered up in a specially designed glass.
The tasting experience is also a new world; the liquid instantly coats the entire inside of the mouth because of the zero gravity. Also, the blend had to be tweaked to counteract the dulling of the senses of smell and taste. “The intensity of the aromas was heightened by extended aging and the addition of a dosage liqueur made from wines raised in oak casks,” explains Cellar Master Yann Munier.
On June 25th, 2025, as the first champagne adapted to space, the Mumm Cordon Rouge Stellar launched on an Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) from The Kennedy Space Center, Florida, returning to Earth July 15th. Far out!
Would you like some champagne? Astronauts have a specially conceived glass of it. Courtesy of Mumm.
Further Out, it’s Raining Gems!
On the exo-planet, the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-121b, scientists believe the clouds are made of metal and, during storms, it mixes with minerals to rain in a downpour of liquid gems.
More specifically, during inclement weather, it rains rubies and sapphires. Its delightful weather also rains iron, too, and can generate up to 11,000 miler per hour winds, according to Advanced Science News.
Discovered in 2015 and roughly 880 Light Years from Earth, this heavy metal exo-planet is a wild weather jewel party.
Simulated image of WASP-121b, based on observations conducted using NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Aix-Marseille University (AMU).
And There’s…a Diamond Bigger Than Big
Another special exo-planet, the PSR J1719-1438, is at least seventy percent…pure diamond.
With a core made of oxygen and carbon, the intense pressure exerted on the planet 4,000 light years away has crushed these elements into crystallized form.
Discovered in 2011, the fabulous PSR J1719-1438 is a neutron star, being extremely small with great mass. It is also called a millesecond pulsar, or just – “the diamond planet”.
Artist’s rendering of the exo-planet PSR J1719-1438.
Astrological Identity by Van Cleef & Arpels
As arguably the most dreamy and poetic High Jewelry brand out here, Van Cleef & Arpels has been inspired by the Zodiac since the 1950s, with a particularly emblematic collection of pendants from the 1970s. Now reinvented with Art Deco graphics and well-chosen background stones, the brand even offers a dedicated site serving as a sort of astrological and interactive planetarium to find your constellation here.
Outer planets, influential movements and meaning is the way of the astrological mind. It is not a science but an art of reading meaning, and these right here are your talismans.
Jewelry and Champagne are Earth’s little vestiges of metal, rocks, grapes and fermentation and they give us every right to dream.
“Come, my brother, I am tasting the stars…”
