World's first atomic bomb explosion created unusual crystal
Atomic bomb explosions create extreme conditions. Italian researchers have discovered an unusual material created by them.
A piece of Trinitite approximately 6 millimeters in size
(Image: H. Hiller (CC BY-SA 3.0))
On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert of the US state of New Mexico. The immense heat of the explosion has created a new crystal, as researchers from Italy have discovered.
The heat fused sand and other materials, including copper from vaporized cables, into a glassy, weakly radioactive substance that can be green or red. After the atomic test called "Trinity", it was named Trinitite.
Inside Trinitite, the team led by mineralogist Luca Bindi discovered a novel crystal structure, a so-called clathrate – which is a lattice with atoms enclosed within it. The crystal lattice in the Trinitite consists of silicon and is in the shape of a dodecahedron with 12 or a tetradecahedron with 14 sides. Enclosed within are calcium, copper, and iron atoms.
Completely new form of clathrate
"It’s a completely new kind of clathrate crystal—something never seen before in nature or in the products of a nuclear explosion," Bindi told US science magazine Scientific American. The team led by the researcher from the University of Florence has published its discovery in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The material owes its unusual structure to the extreme conditions under which it was formed: The starting materials were exposed to temperatures of 1500 degrees Celsius and pressures in the range of several gigapascals. They vaporized, mixed, and cooled down in a short time.
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All this happened in seconds, so the atoms didn't have time to organize into stable structures, Bindi said. That's why such a non-equilibrium material could form. Under normal conditions, the clathrate would not be stable but would decompose.
Bindi's team had already made a remarkable discovery in red Trinitite in 2021: They found a quasicrystal in it, which also consists of iron, silicon, copper, and calcium. A quasicrystal has a structure inside like a crystal. However, unlike a crystal, it is irregular.
Quasicrystals are very rare. In addition to the one discovered by Bindi in Trinitite, only a few are known from meteorite impacts, which can create similarly extreme conditions.
(wpl)
