In 2017, a teacher gave his students an assignment. The grain had 20 sides and an internal structure that was impossible in other crystals and so complex that nobody can explain how it formed. When the quasicrystal was discovered inside the glass, the surprise came with a mystery. None had ever been found elsewhere on Earth but as researchers learnt that quasicrystals formed under extreme temperature, shock, and pressure, they realized that atomic blasts provided these conditions. Quasicrystals were eventually discovered in meteorites and they were also created in the laboratory. A crystal with “in-between” traits could not exist but in 1984, they were acknowledged in theory and called quasicrystals. All crystals have atoms arranged in an orderly or disorderly fashion. Called a quasicrystal, they were believed to be impossible. The glass formed when the explosion fused desert sand, asphalt, the test tower and its copper wires together.īut decades later, something was discovered inside the glass that rocked the scientific world. The blast created a new mineral called trinitite which looked like green glass.
The world’s first test happened in the state of New Mexico on 16 July 1945.
