Comment by dmurray

3 months ago

What was special about the first nuclear test, rather than the thousands of others, at least hundreds of which were also in the Nevada desert?

Obviously it's historically significant, and the new forms of matter were first discovered there , so that's why trinitite is named after the site. But 80 years later, wouldn't we expect the other bomb sites to have just as many interesting chemical reactions?

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dmurray

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eesmith  3 months ago

We do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite#Similar_materials says "Occasionally, the name trinitite is broadly applied to all glassy residues of nuclear bomb testing, not just the Trinity test" and lists hiroshimaite and kharitonchiki as similar glassy residues from Hiroshima and the Semipalatinsk Test Site, respectively.

The general term for for the fused glass-like material formed during a nuclear test" seems to be "atomsite" - https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/3001767 . Some images of atomsite from the Trinity and Semipalatinsk test sites are at http://www.radioaktivitaet.uni-bremen.de/downloads/Pittauero...

As a wild guess, what's special is it might be the easiest to get, with many samples to study.

  • kombookcha  3 months ago

    Adding to this, I seem to recall that the specific geological/chemical conditions on the site is consequential for the sorts of glass produced. So presumably, Hiroshmiaite and Trinitite would actually be physically distinct as a material.

    As I recall, research on meteorite impacts use the similarly formed Impactite to deduce various things about ancient impact sites. As an aside, I think they also do really elaborate calculations of force and angle of impact based on surveying the spread pattern and distribution of these little glass chunks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impactite

    • therwex  3 months ago

      Probably no Hiroshiaite as the explosion there was at higher altitude of 580 meters. Trinity explosion was close to the desert surface (30 meters). The radius of trinite formation was about 300 meters around the tower so none would have formed at Hiroshima.

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dreamcompiler  3 months ago

Availability is probably the answer.

I have some Trinitite. It's easy to obtain. You can buy it in rock shops, especially in the Southwest. Back in the day, when they opened the Trinity site to the public a couple of days a year, there was no prohibition on collecting Trinitite. That's why rock shops have it.

They still open the site to the public one or two days a year but they won't let you collect Trinitite any more. You can walk on it but don't try to put it in your pocket or a person with a gun will pull you aside for a chat.

https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/alamogordo-visit-the-trinity-...

There's not much public access to the sites in Nevada; at least until the DOE resumes their bus tours and they're even more hard over about not letting you pick up anything.

https://nnss.gov/community/monthly-community-public-tours/

comradesmith  3 months ago

It’s probably just that more people are looking at the trinity site because of said historic significance

Rover222  3 months ago

"also in the Nevada desert" - huh? The first test was in NM. Probably irrelevant to your point, but...