Trinitite is a glass-like material with an unusual structure, usually gray, green, and red, and only forms when a nuclear bomb explodes .
If you want to create trinitite, one only needs a bucket of sand and the intense heat of a nuclear weapon, IFL Science reported on March 25. Scientists began to notice this special glass stone after dropping the first atomic bombs at the end of World War II. Experts later discovered that the material was even more exotic than they had thought.
On July 16, 1945, the US military conducted the world’s first nuclear bomb test in the New Mexico desert with the codename “Trinity”.
In an instant, a radioactive plutonium-encased machine known as the “Gadget” exploded, creating a giant fireball that flew into the sky, vaporizing everything it didn’t. it touches. The test was successful.
However, this experiment was not only destructive, it also spawned a new substance.
Researchers next to the metal ball “Gadget”, preparing for the world’s first nuclear explosion (Image: Live Science).
In a study published this past June 1 in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ,” researchers say they have discovered unusual crystals known as “quasicrystals” (hypothetical quasicrystals). crystals) , they are located in the rocks at the Trinity site.
Accordingly, pseudocrystals are an ordered but non-cyclical structure.
These exotic crystals lack the symmetry commonly found in known crystal types, they are usually found only in meteorites from the very beginning of the Solar System, and are thought to have been produced only under thermal conditions. the extreme pressures and pressures of the most powerful explosions in the universe.
“To understand other countries’ nuclear weapons, we have to understand their nuclear testing programs. We often analyze debris and radioactive gas to understand how weapons are made. or what material they contain… A type of crystal has formed at the site of a nuclear explosion…”. The study author said.
When the “Gadget” explodes, it creates a ball of fire hotter than the Sun. The heat and force of this explosion was so strong that the surrounding metal and sand melted together forming a new type of crystal, later named Trinitite .
A “blob” inside the Trinitite sample contains an unprecedented quasicrystal. (Photo: Live Science).
Semi-crystalline , which has been a theory since 1984, is one where the crystal structure is both ordered and disordered, alternating between two states. But then scientists proved it couldn’t, there wasn’t anything on Earth like that, because it would require a thermodynamic shock from an incredibly fast collision event. statue.
But using techniques such as electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, they observed six red samples of trinitite. Trinitite is also available in a green color like glass, but the red variety is much rarer because it is the accidental convergence of material from thin copper wires during the explosion.
The first and only semi-crystalline type discovered in the world – (Image: FLORENCE UNIVERSITY)
They finally found the treasure: a small, 20-sided silicon-copper-calcium-iron grain with a rotational symmetry 5 times that is not possible in ordinary crystals.
And it has that magical combination – alternating between order and disorder. It is semi-crystalline . Scientists already know where it formed, what it is, but still do not know specifically how it formed.
Scientists recently discovered that trinitite has an extremely unusual atomic structure containing “forbidden” quasicrystals. A typical crystal is a material whose atoms are symmetrically arranged in a repeating periodic pattern. Meanwhile, quasicrystals have atoms that are still ordered but the pattern does not repeat. This creates a strange asymmetrical and non-repeating atomic structure, different from typical crystals, and is known as “forbidden symmetry”.
Experts note that quasicrystals form from meteoric events and in the laboratory, but it seems the atomic explosion also generated enough power. When Israeli materials scientist Daniel Shechtman first identified quasicrystals in the 1980s, he was criticized and ridiculed. However, this discovery eventually earned him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.