Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
The Trinity test was the first detonation ever of a nuclear weapon. On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 am local time, the device exploded with an energy equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT, maybe higher. The destructive force altered its surroundings, including delivering extreme conditions to the soil and creating unexpected configurations of minerals in it. Over 60 years later, new ones are still being found.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Today, researchers report the discovery of a previously unknown calcium–copper–silicon clathrate crystal. Clathrates are chemical compounds that form cages in the shapes of different solids, such as a dodecahedron (12 faces) or tetradecahedron (14 faces). This one is cubic, and it was embedded within a copper-rich droplet inside some trinitite glass, a silicon-rich material that also formed due to the nuclear explosion.
“This is the first crystallographically confirmed clathrate ever identified among the solid products of a nuclear detonation,” lead author Luca Bindi at the University of Florence told IFLScience.
“What makes the finding especially interesting is that this clathrate formed in the same extreme environment as the unusual silicon-rich quasicrystal we previously reported from Trinity material. Both phases appear to have formed during the explosion under highly transient, far-from-equilibrium conditions involving enormous temperatures, pressures, and ultrafast cooling.”
A clathrate crystal such as this cannot be created under normal laboratory conditions. It was the combination of extreme properties delivered by the bomb that allowed its formation. The structure itself is only metastable, so it needed the pressure, temperature, vaporization, melting, and more that the nuclear explosion delivered.
This work also highlights an important idea: nature – and sometimes human technological events – can create materials far beyond the limits of conventional synthesis.
Luca Bindi
“One thing I would especially like the public to understand is that these materials are not simply curiosities from a historic nuclear test. They provide a rare scientific record of how matter behaves under conditions that humans almost never encounter directly. By studying these microscopic phases, we can learn fundamental lessons about crystal formation, stability, and the emergence of entirely new structures in extreme environments,” Bindi told IFLScience.
While this particular crystal is the product of a human-made event, the value of studying such objects also applies to what is produced in extreme natural events. The team's calculations suggest there are only narrow ranges of conditions (even at those extremes) under which this clathrate could form. The insights have implications for the study of minerals and also condensed matter physics.
“This work also highlights an important idea: nature – and sometimes human technological events – can create materials far beyond the limits of conventional synthesis. Similar processes may occur during lightning strikes, meteorite impacts, or planetary collisions. So these tiny grains preserved in trinitite are effectively snapshots of physics and chemistry operating at extraordinary extremes,” Bindi told IFLScience.
A paper describing the discovery is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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