World's first nuclear bomb test created rare, otherworldly crystal

On July 16, 1945, the U.S. Army detonated the world's first nuclear test weapon over the New Mexico desert. In an instant, a metal-coated plutonium device named "Gadget" imploded, creating a gargantuan fireball that rose high into the sky, vaporizing everything it touched. Sand melted into radioactive glass, and a crater nearly as wide as a football field dented the planet. The test — codenamed Trinity — was a success.

But Trinity didn't just destroy; it also left something strange and new behind.

In a study published in the June 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have detected otherworldly crystals called "quasicrystals" trapped in the bomb-blasted rocks at the Trinity site. These odd gems, which lack the perfect symmetry of true crystals, are usually only seen in meteorites from the early solar system, and are thought to be forged only in the extreme heat and pressure of the universe's most powerful explosions.