BrainStuff Classics: How Did Nuclear Weapons Testing Create New Minerals?

The heat of nuclear weapons is enough to melt sand into glass. Learn the story of trinitite, the glass from the first atomic test site, in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/trinitite-first-nuclear-bomb-turned-sand-to-glass.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
I'm Lauren vogel Bomb in today's episode is another classic
from our podcast's archives. In this one, we talked about
a mineral that you could say is man made, but
it isn't produced in any lab or forge. It's trinotite,
the glass that was created when the first nuclear weapons

(00:23):
tests melted desert sand. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
It was theoretical physicist Jay Robert Oppenheimer who chose the
code named Trinity for his trial run of atomic weapons,
though he could never remember why. As a participant in
the Manhattan Project, he oversaw the construction of four atomic bombs.
By the spring of nineteen forty five, the U. S.

(00:45):
Military had started looking for a place to test one
of them. Out Sites in California, Colorado, and Texas were
considered before the Pentagon shows. A patch of terrain at
the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico is the
site of the Trinity Project. On July sixty five, at
five a m Mountain time, a plutonium bomb known simply
as the Gadget was detonated at the site. This marked

(01:06):
the first deployment of an atomic weapon in recorded history.
Within a month, the United States used two atomic bombs
to level both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, helping bring
World War two to an end and sending a very
clear and violent message to other world powers. So began
the atomic age. Back in New Mexico, scientists discovered that
the explosion that had started at all left something behind.

(01:27):
Nuclear physicist Herbert L. Anderson and his driver inspected the
Trinity blast site shortly after the bomb detonated. Over the radio,
he announced that the area had turned all green. A
layer of small glassy beads covered the crater. Most were
all of green in color, though some samples were black
or reddish in hue. The substance is now known as trinitite.

(01:47):
Plenty of trinotite was still there in September ninety five,
when a Time magazine report described the crater as a
lake of green jade shaped like a splashy star. Physicists
realized that this trinitite was desert sand that had melted
down during the blast and then resolidified. Our understanding of
trinotite has changed recently. At first, scientists assumed that the

(02:07):
grains of sand that turned into this material had melted
at ground level, but a study found that the sand
was actually pulled up into the heart of the explosion,
where high temperatures liquefied it. The stuff later rained down, cooled,
and turned solid. There are no laws against buying or
selling trinotite samples that have already been collected, but it's
now illegal to remove the substance from the blast field.

(02:29):
You will find much of it on site anyway. America's
Atomic Energy Commission boldozed over the nuclear test site in
nineteen fifty three. In the process, a bounty of trinotite
was buried underground, and buyers beware, there's a lot of
phony trinotite on the market. Trinotite is indeed radioactive, however,
it's been deemed basically safe by a health physics survey.
So the glassy beads were snatched up in huge quantities

(02:51):
by souvenir hungry visitors to the site. Jewelry created with
trinotite was even made for the purpose of propaganda. These
kinds of glassy residues are left behind whenever nuclear weapons
go off at the ground level. They've been recovered in
the wake of atomic tests over such places as the
Algerian Desert, but the name trinotite is typically reserved for
specimens found at the original Trinity site at the White

(03:12):
Sands Missile Range. Some scientists prefer to call material found
in other parts of the world atom site. Today's episode
is based on the article Trinotite How the first nuclear
bomb turned sand to Glass on how stuff works dot Com,
written by Mark Mancini. Rain stuff It's production of by
Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and

(03:34):
is produced by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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