The newly discovered quasicrystal from the New Mexico test site is the oldest one known that was made by humans. Quasicrystals are a three-dimensional version of this idea. Penrose tilings (one shown) are an example of a structure that is ordered but does not repeat. First discovered in the lab in 1980s, quasicrystals also appear in nature in meteorites ( SN: 12/8/16). This means quasicrystals can have properties that are forbidden for normal crystals. Quasicrystals have a structure that is orderly like a normal crystal but that doesn’t repeat. Normal crystals are made of atoms locked in a lattice that repeats in a regular pattern. That grain contains a rare form of matter called a quasicrystal, born the moment the nuclear age began, scientists report May 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
High temperatures and pressures helped forge an unusual structure within one piece of trinitite, in a grain of the material just 10 micrometers across - a bit longer than a red blood cell. In the aftermath of the first test of an atomic bomb, in July 1945, all this debris fused together, leaving the ground of the New Mexico test site coated with a glassy substance now called trinitite. The tower it sat on and the copper wires strung around it: vaporized. In an instant, the bomb obliterated everything.
