Nuclear bomb ‘crystal’ present in world first as ‘Ox Blood’ rock baffles scientists
Scientists have discovered a unique, never-before-seen ‘ox blood’ crystal formed by the extreme heat and pressure of the world’s first nuclear bomb blast
A unique mineral created during the world’s first nuclear bomb test in 1945(Image: Luca Bindi and Paul J. Steinhardt)
Scientists have been left utterly baffled by a bizarre “ox blood” rock created during the world’s first-ever nuclear bomb blast. The mind-boggling discovery has revealed a completely unique, never-before-seen crystal structure that cannot be found anywhere else in nature.
The story traces back to a dark July morning in 1945, when US military personnel and scientists detonated the historic first atomic bomb in a remote New Mexico desert.
The apocalyptic explosion unleashed forces equal to 25,000 tons of TNT, completely vaporising the bomb’s drop tower and melting the desert sand into glass for 1,000 feet in every direction. Experts later named this eerie, faintly radioactive glass “trinitite” after the Trinity test site.
However, more than 80 years on from the terrifying blast, researchers have made a jaw-dropping breakthrough.
While analysing a rare, crimson-coloured “oxblood” variant of the rock, they stumbled upon a totally unique clathrate crystal.
Clathrates are a strange type of crystalline structure where one element forms a cage that traps other atoms inside.
In the specimen highlighted, silicon atoms locked copper and calcium inside complex 12- and 14-sided lattices – a phenomenon which is virtually unheard of.
The striking scarlet hue of the rock actually came from the vaporised test tower and military equipment, which bled metallic droplets into the molten silicon glass during the blast.
During the Trinity explosion, hellish temperatures topped a scorching 1,500 degrees Celsius, while pressures skyrocketed to a staggering 8 gigapascals, matching the intense conditions found deep inside the Earth’s crust. The extreme forces violently shoved the atoms into freak configurations.
Speaking about the incredible find, Luca Bindi, a mineralogist at the University of Florence in Italy and first author of the study published in the journal PNAS, told Live Science: “We wanted to further explore these extreme-formation products.”
While a mathematical analysis proved the new crystal wasn’t linked to a previously discovered “quasicrystal” in the glass, it has completely blown open our understanding of geology and the limits of science.
Bindi added: “Extreme events like nuclear blasts, lightning, or impacts can generate new mineral phases and structures that expand our understanding of how matter organises under extreme conditions.”
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