Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren vogel Bomb in today's episode is another classic
Speaker 1: from our podcast's archives. In this one, we talked about
Speaker 1: a mineral that you could say is man made, but
Speaker 1: it isn't produced in any lab or forge. It's trinotite,
Speaker 1: the glass that was created when the first nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: tests melted desert sand. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
Speaker 1: It was theoretical physicist Jay Robert Oppenheimer who chose the
Speaker 1: code named Trinity for his trial run of atomic weapons,
Speaker 1: though he could never remember why. As a participant in
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, he oversaw the construction of four atomic bombs.
Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen forty five, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military had started looking for a place to test one
Speaker 1: of them. Out Sites in California, Colorado, and Texas were
Speaker 1: considered before the Pentagon shows. A patch of terrain at
Speaker 1: the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico is the
Speaker 1: site of the Trinity Project. On July sixty five, at
Speaker 1: five a m Mountain time, a plutonium bomb known simply
Speaker 1: as the Gadget was detonated at the site. This marked
Speaker 1: the first deployment of an atomic weapon in recorded history.
Speaker 1: Within a month, the United States used two atomic bombs
Speaker 1: to level both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, helping bring
Speaker 1: World War two to an end and sending a very
Speaker 1: clear and violent message to other world powers. So began
Speaker 1: the atomic age. Back in New Mexico, scientists discovered that
Speaker 1: the explosion that had started at all left something behind.
Speaker 1: Nuclear physicist Herbert L. Anderson and his driver inspected the
Speaker 1: Trinity blast site shortly after the bomb detonated. Over the radio,
Speaker 1: he announced that the area had turned all green. A
Speaker 1: layer of small glassy beads covered the crater. Most were
Speaker 1: all of green in color, though some samples were black
Speaker 1: or reddish in hue. The substance is now known as trinitite.
Speaker 1: Plenty of trinotite was still there in September ninety five,
Speaker 1: when a Time magazine report described the crater as a
Speaker 1: lake of green jade shaped like a splashy star. Physicists
Speaker 1: realized that this trinitite was desert sand that had melted
Speaker 1: down during the blast and then resolidified. Our understanding of
Speaker 1: trinotite has changed recently. At first, scientists assumed that the
Speaker 1: grains of sand that turned into this material had melted
Speaker 1: at ground level, but a study found that the sand
Speaker 1: was actually pulled up into the heart of the explosion,
Speaker 1: where high temperatures liquefied it. The stuff later rained down, cooled,
Speaker 1: and turned solid. There are no laws against buying or
Speaker 1: selling trinotite samples that have already been collected, but it's
Speaker 1: now illegal to remove the substance from the blast field.
Speaker 1: You will find much of it on site anyway. America's
Speaker 1: Atomic Energy Commission boldozed over the nuclear test site in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. In the process, a bounty of trinotite
Speaker 1: was buried underground, and buyers beware, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: phony trinotite on the market. Trinotite is indeed radioactive, however,
Speaker 1: it's been deemed basically safe by a health physics survey.
Speaker 1: So the glassy beads were snatched up in huge quantities
Speaker 1: by souvenir hungry visitors to the site. Jewelry created with
Speaker 1: trinotite was even made for the purpose of propaganda. These
Speaker 1: kinds of glassy residues are left behind whenever nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: go off at the ground level. They've been recovered in
Speaker 1: the wake of atomic tests over such places as the
Speaker 1: Algerian Desert, but the name trinotite is typically reserved for
Speaker 1: specimens found at the original Trinity site at the White
Speaker 1: Sands Missile Range. Some scientists prefer to call material found
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world atom site. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article Trinotite How the first nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb turned sand to Glass on how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Mark Mancini. Rain stuff It's production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,
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