Paper in PNAS identifies a novel clathrate crystal inside trinitite, the glassy residue from the 1945 Trinity nuclear test, formed under extreme nonequilibrium conditions.
Key Takeaways
The clathrate has cage structures of silicon dodecahedrons and tetrakaidecahedrons trapping calcium, copper, and iron atoms – never seen before in nature or nuclear debris.
Conditions: sand hit >1,500°C and several gigapascals of pressure, then cooled in seconds, preventing atoms from settling into stable configurations.
The same four elements (Fe, Si, Cu, Ca) also produced a quasicrystal in trinitite, first reported in 2021; researchers believe copper availability determined which structure formed.
Neither the quasicrystal nor this clathrate has been reproduced in a lab, making Trinity debris an irreplaceable sample of nonequilibrium matter.
Authors frame high-energy events – nuclear blasts, lightning strikes, hypervelocity impacts – as natural laboratories for unexpected crystalline phases.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters questioned why Trinity specifically gets research attention over hundreds of subsequent desert tests; the likely answer is historical significance driving scientific focus, not uniquely superior chemistry.
There was genuine debate about whether Trinity-derived materials qualify as “naturally forming” given the artificial detonation – the rough consensus distinguishes “extreme but plausible conditions” from deliberate lab synthesis.
A side thread dissected “melted” vs. “molten” sand and whether “seconds” is actually fast at the atomic scale, with no firm resolution on either point.
