What was special about the first nuclear test, rather than the thousands of others, at least hundreds of which were also in the Nevada desert?
Obviously it's historically significant, and the new forms of matter were first discovered there , so that's why trinitite is named after the site. But 80 years later, wouldn't we expect the other bomb sites to have just as many interesting chemical reactions?
I have some Trinitite. It's easy to obtain. You can buy it in rock shops, especially in the Southwest. Back in the day, when they opened the Trinity site to the public a couple of days a year, there was no prohibition on collecting Trinitite. That's why rock shops have it.
They still open the site to the public one or two days a year but they won't let you collect Trinitite any more. You can walk on it but don't try to put it in your pocket or a person with a gun will pull you aside for a chat.
There's not much public access to the sites in Nevada; at least until the DOE resumes their bus tours and they're even more hard over about not letting you pick up anything.
While the news is interesting in itself, I found the lack of illustrations disappointing.
When discussing new novel molecular structures, one would think providing a concrete visuals of what they look like more interesting than human-scale photos of materials containing them?
> The only other known naturally forming quasicrystal was found inside meteorite fragments
Does it really count as "naturally forming" if we had to artificially construct and detonate a nuke during a carefully conducted experiment to create this one?
How do we know the quasicrystals in the meteorite fragments are naturally occurring, and weren't created by nuclear detonations on an alien planet, then blasted off into space when an asteroid hit the site? Or perhaps the nuclear explosion was tested on an asteroid rather than a planet.
One language usage question, and one content question:
"Melted sand"?? Isn't it "molten sand"? Is my hunch completely wrong, or is the author not a native speaker? Neither am I, but melted sand sounds so weird to my ears.
This all happened in a matter of seconds, so atoms didn’t have time to arrange into stable structures,[...]
Isn't seconds kinda like ages at that scale? Atoms needing longer than seconds to arrange under super high pressure sounds also dubious? But I am no expert in that area.
For the same reason why in English 12 = twelve, but 14 = fourteen. Not all numerals are formed by the same rule.
The correspondents of the -teen numbers in Greek were formed similarly with English, after the model of 14 = four and ten = "tetrakaideka".
"Tetrakaideka" is a contracted form of 14, normally used in compound words. When "14" was an isolated word, it would have been "tettarakaideka" or "tessarakaideka". These are the forms for the neuter gender, the numeral "4" = "tettara" or "tessara" (depending on the dialect) was changed by declension for other genders and cases.
In Ancient Greek numbers bigger than 20, the word "and" = "kai" was usually omitted, but then the bigger number was always the first like in "twenty-four". When "and" was inserted, then the order could also be inverse, like in "four-and-twenty".
Because the Greek word for 12 is something like "though-theka". And the word for 14 is "theka-tessera". Like most European languages, 11 and 12 are special, then it reverts to the "single digit - ten" or "ten - single digit" pattern.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 51.8 ms ] threadObviously it's historically significant, and the new forms of matter were first discovered there , so that's why trinitite is named after the site. But 80 years later, wouldn't we expect the other bomb sites to have just as many interesting chemical reactions?
I have some Trinitite. It's easy to obtain. You can buy it in rock shops, especially in the Southwest. Back in the day, when they opened the Trinity site to the public a couple of days a year, there was no prohibition on collecting Trinitite. That's why rock shops have it.
They still open the site to the public one or two days a year but they won't let you collect Trinitite any more. You can walk on it but don't try to put it in your pocket or a person with a gun will pull you aside for a chat.
https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/alamogordo-visit-the-trinity-...
There's not much public access to the sites in Nevada; at least until the DOE resumes their bus tours and they're even more hard over about not letting you pick up anything.
https://nnss.gov/community/monthly-community-public-tours/
When discussing new novel molecular structures, one would think providing a concrete visuals of what they look like more interesting than human-scale photos of materials containing them?
Does it really count as "naturally forming" if we had to artificially construct and detonate a nuke during a carefully conducted experiment to create this one?
"Melted sand"?? Isn't it "molten sand"? Is my hunch completely wrong, or is the author not a native speaker? Neither am I, but melted sand sounds so weird to my ears.
Isn't seconds kinda like ages at that scale? Atoms needing longer than seconds to arrange under super high pressure sounds also dubious? But I am no expert in that area.Totally OT but if "dodeca" means 12, why isn't 14 just "tetradeca"? What's the "kai" for?
The correspondents of the -teen numbers in Greek were formed similarly with English, after the model of 14 = four and ten = "tetrakaideka".
"Tetrakaideka" is a contracted form of 14, normally used in compound words. When "14" was an isolated word, it would have been "tettarakaideka" or "tessarakaideka". These are the forms for the neuter gender, the numeral "4" = "tettara" or "tessara" (depending on the dialect) was changed by declension for other genders and cases.
In Ancient Greek numbers bigger than 20, the word "and" = "kai" was usually omitted, but then the bigger number was always the first like in "twenty-four". When "and" was inserted, then the order could also be inverse, like in "four-and-twenty".
"kai" is "and" in Greek.
Whenever I read a phrase about scientists observing something they thought was impossible ... I get really excited for scientists in that field! :-)