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Nuclear detonations unleash an astonishing amount of destructive force. But the extreme pressure and temperature that they generate also makes nuclear blasts a cauldron of chemical creation, capable of delivering new and surprising scientific discoveries.
In the 1950s, for instance, scientists examining debris from US hydrogen bomb tests found two new elements, which now occupy numbers 99 and 100 in the periodic table. They named them after prominent nuclear scientists: einsteinium for Albert Einstein, and fermium for Enrico Fermi.
Now, scientists sifting through debris at the site of the first-ever nuclear bomb detonation – held in New Mexico in July 1945 and named the Trinity test – have unearthed a different chemical oddity. In their paper, the researchers report the discovery of a previously unknown type of “quasicrystal” – a crystal formation once thought impossible due to its irregular geometric structure.