The sample of red trinitite that produced the clathrate
Rare, high-energy events – such as nuclear detonations – are authentic natural laboratories for producing unexpected crystalline matter.
We are not always able to identify the exact moment when the world changes. But when the New Mexico dawn broke at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945, it was, without a doubt, a decisive moment in the history of humanity.
That day, the detonation of a plutonium implosion device known as Gadget (US Army) – the world’s first test of a nuclear bomb. More than 80 years later, scientists continue to discover the changes it caused.
Now, in a mineral forged “in the fury” of – as he describes it – the world’s first deliberate nuclear explosion, scientists have found a crystal that, under more normal circumstances, would not be able to exist on Earth.
The revelation was made in a study this Tuesday, in PNAS. “Extreme and transient conditions produced by nuclear detonations can generate solid-state phases inaccessible to conventional synthesis,” the University of Florence team wrote.
“We report the discovery of a calcium copper silicate type I clathrate previously unknown, formed during the 1945 Trinity nuclear test; the first crystallographically confirmed clathrate identified among products of nuclear explosions”, they added.
What happened that day?
A Energy release was equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. It vaporized the 30-meter test tower and surrounding copper infrastructure, including cables and instruments used to record the explosion.
The resulting fireball fused the tower and copper with the asphalt and desert sand that were sucked into the mushroom cloud, turning the mixture into a glassy material, never seen before, later called trinitite.
It was in this material that scientists found some strange structures.
In 2021, the team identified an unexpected quasicrystal in the rare red form of trinitite that contains metal from the tower, cables and recording instruments… and now this material variant revealed another surprise!
Right next to the quasicrystal, researchers found a clatrato – a crystalline structure consisting of atoms arranged in a cage-like lattice that can trap other atoms inside it.
Inorganic clathrates are special because they require very specific conditions to form – and they are rarely found in nature.
On that July 16, 1945, there was an extreme shock, temperature exceeding 1,500 degrees Celsius and pressures of 5 to 8 gigapascalswhich then rapidly decreased.
This rapid change, followed by rapid cooling, allowed the trinitite atoms to arrange themselves into unusual configurations, then lock into place, creating structures that would otherwise fail to form.
This material is basically a moment frozen in timepreserving a mineralogical portrait of the brief temperature and pressure conditions generated during the detonation – a treasure trove for scientists, as Science Alert describes.
