When the first nuclear bomb exploded at the Trinity site in 1945, it turned the desert sand into a laboratory for impossible science. Decades later, the radioactive glass created is revealing new materials that normal chemistry can’t explain.

Recently, researchers discovered an unknown calcium–copper–silicon clathrate in debris from the 1945 Trinity nuclear test. Found embedded in blast-formed trinitite glass, this cubic, cage-like crystal represents the first confirmed clathrate produced by a nuclear detonation.