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?

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comradesmith 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It’s probably just that more people are looking at the trinity site because of said historic significance

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lightsighter 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Trinity test took place in New Mexico, not Nevada.

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eesmith 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite#Similar_materials says "Occasionally, the name trinitite is broadly applied to all glassy residues of nuclear bomb testing, not just the Trinity test" and lists hiroshimaite and kharitonchiki as similar glassy residues from Hiroshima and the Semipalatinsk Test Site, respectively.

The general term for for the fused glass-like material formed during a nuclear test" seems to be "atomsite" - https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/3001767 . Some images of atomsite from the Trinity and Semipalatinsk test sites are at http://www.radioaktivitaet.uni-bremen.de/downloads/Pittauero...

As a wild guess, what's special is it might be the easiest to get, with many samples to study.

	▲	kombookcha 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Adding to this, I seem to recall that the specific geological/chemical conditions on the site is consequential for the sorts of glass produced. So presumably, Hiroshmiaite and Trinitite would actually be physically distinct as a material. As I recall, research on meteorite impacts use the similarly formed Impactite to deduce various things about ancient impact sites. As an aside, I think they also do really elaborate calculations of force and angle of impact based on surveying the spread pattern and distribution of these little glass chunks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impactite