More than 80 years after the Trinity nuclear test, considered the first time mankind witnessed the power of an atomic bomb, scientists are still digging out new scientific discoveries in its remnants. Recently, the latest analysis of the materials left behind by this historic nuclear explosion showed that a crystal structure called a clathrate was confirmed for the first time in the nuclear explosion products.
On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted a test explosion of a plutonium bomb code-named "Trinity" in the New Mexico desert as part of the Manhattan Project. The atomic bomb released an energy equivalent to about 21,000 tons of TNT, vaporizing rock and metal support structures in the center of the explosion, and enveloping a large amount of surrounding sand, mixing it into a violent "atomic storm." Under the extreme conditions of high temperatures and tens of thousands of atmospheric pressures, these molten sand, clay, metals in the 30-meter-high steel structure of the test tower, and a large number of copper cables were fused in an instant and cooled rapidly, eventually forming a glass-like substance named "trinitite".
Similar to Kryptonite in the comics, there are different "versions" of Trinity Glass: the common one is green glass, while a red glass with a higher copper content is unique due to the incorporation of more metal from copper cables and brackets. Once collected as souvenirs by visitors to nuclear test sites, the glass is now a valuable sample for studying unique chemical reactions under extreme conditions.
As early as 2021, a team led by Luca Bindi, a geologist at the University of Florence in Italy, discovered a new icosahedral quasicrystal structure in a red Trinity glass sample, which attracted attention. In the latest research, Bindi's team used X-ray diffraction and electron probe technologies to conduct in-depth analysis of tiny droplets of copper-rich red Trinity glass. As a result, a brand new crystalline material was identified in the area near where quasicrystals were previously discovered.
The research team wrote in the latest report: "We report the formation of a previously unknown [calcium-copper-silicon] Type I clathrate crystal during the Trinity nuclear test. This is the first time that the existence of a clathrate structure has been crystallographically confirmed in the solid product of a nuclear explosion." Clathrates are widely found in nature and are characterized by a cage-like structure in the crystal lattice that can "trap" other atoms or molecules. Although its structural arrangement is different from that of irregular quasicrystals, the elemental compositions of the two in trinity glass are similar, which also prompted researchers to think about whether there is a deeper structural relationship between the two.
The research team pointed out that since both clathrates and quasicrystals are composed of elements commonly found in desert sand and metal test towers, it can be concluded that both were formed during nuclear explosions. However, computational models based on the sample composition show that under normal conditions, this clathrate structure can only exist stably when the copper content is about 10%, while the actual copper content in Trinity glass reaches 21%. This means that this "cage-like" crystal must be generated instantly in a very short time when the temperature and pressure rise sharply and then fall back quickly, as if they were "frozen" in the instantaneous window of the "blink of an eye" of a nuclear explosion.
The study also pointed out that this finding excludes the possibility of using a simple "clathrate framework" to explain the trinity quasicrystal structure, emphasizing that the silicon-rich phases generated under extreme conditions have independent and distinct structural characteristics. Scientists say that such extreme environments are extremely rare, and they hope that humans will no longer recreate them in reality through nuclear explosions. Therefore, the glass rocks left behind by the Trinity test have become a unique natural experimental record of this "creation in the moment of destruction." Relevant research results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), providing a new perspective for people to understand the evolution of material morphology and crystal structure under extreme conditions.