Description

Handsome Display featuring a specimen of Trinitite from the original Atomic Bomb in New Mexico in 1945.  Case measures 6 inches long by 8 inches high and .75 inches wide.  The front of the display is glass.

Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass is the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily composed of arkosic sand composed of quartz grains and feldspar (both microcline and smaller amount of plagioclase with small amount of calcite, hornblende and augite in a matrix of sandy clay) that was melted by the atomic blast. It was first academically described in American Mineralogist in 1948.

It is usually a light green, although red trinitite was also found in one section of the blast site, and rare pieces of black trinitite also formed. It is mildly radioactive but safe to handle.

Pieces of the material may still be found at the Trinity site as of 2018, although most of it was bulldozed and buried by the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1953.

In 2005 it was theorized by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Robert Hermes and independent investigator William Strickfaden that much of the mineral was formed by sand which was drawn up inside the fireball itself and then rained down in a liquid form. In a 2010 article in Geology Today, Nelson Eby of University of Massachusetts Lowell and Robert Hermes described trinitite:
Contained within the glass are melted bits of the first atomic bomb and the support structures and various radionuclides formed during the detonation. The glass itself is marvelously complex at the tens to hundreds of micrometre scale, and besides glasses of varying composition also contains unmelted quartz grains. Air transport of the melted material led to the formation of spheres and dumbbell shaped glass particles. Similar glasses are formed during all ground level nuclear detonations and contain forensic information that can be used to identify the atomic device.

This was supported by a 2011 study based on nuclear imaging and spectrometric techniques. Green trinitite is theorized by researchers to contain material from the bomb’s support structure, while red trinitite contains material originating from copper electrical wiring.