Trinitite: Man’s dodgiest geological creation? #OTD The New Mexican desert is suddenly lit
Trinitite: Man’s dodgiest geological creation? #OTDThe New Mexican desert is suddenly lit by a flash of blinding light, a huge fireball forms within seconds, miles high, gradually giving way to a dark and roiling mushroom cloud climbing up towards the stratosphere, raining semi molten debris of what was once sand and cheap military spec prefab buildings.We all love tektites like Moldavite or Lybian desert glass, those lovely green to yellow splashes of fused silica that result from asteroid impacts melting the rocks that they slam into, but here is similar glass that rained down from this event when the sun momentarily came down to Earth, vaporising and congealing the sand and buuildings at the test site, which has become a bit of a collectors piece.Trinitite was formed at the first test of an atomic bomb on July 16 1945; 70 years ago today. It was at first supposed that the heat of the explosion had simply fused the sand, but it now appears that the formation process was somewhat more complex than thought, and that the sand was actually scooped up into the fireball and melted in the air before plummeting to the ground in a semi fused form. It is also known as Alamogordo glass and atomsite, it is a popular souvenir of a historical event, though harder to get ahold of than formally.Colour varies, green being the most common, while black contains iron from the tower that held the bomb, and red has a splash of copper from the nuke itself. While slightly hot, it is safe to own, and requires less precautions than most uranium group minerals for example.These old sites are unprotected in some parts of the world. In Central Asia, a Polish journalist published a hair raising description of his exploration a few years ago of the innards of a nuked mountain that was a relic of Soviet underground nuclear testing, from which the locals have been extracting and recycling metals such as copper wire for years, usually dying young of cancer in the process. The tunnels drilled to insert the warhead and telemetry are still accessible to the brave and foolhardy and the locals keep on searching them for abandoned goodies, regardless of risk.LozDear Readers, Most of our posts are not reaching your news feed due to fb’s filtering system. If you wish to enjoy our posts more often, use the following for information on how to go about it: http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1VWMUJ0.Image credit: Shadackhttp://bit.ly/1V791Uqhttp://1.usa.gov/1O8BlAw -- source link
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