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The Nuclear Present

  • Bryan M. Wilson (author)

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TitleThe Nuclear Present
ContributorBryan M. Wilson (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0014.1.39
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/making-the-geologic-now/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightWilson, Bryan M.
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2012-12-04
Long abstractOn September 29th, 2009, I was about to begin a pilgrimage to a remote location in the Southwestern desert. With my mother as navigator, my plan was to drive from my home state of Montana to the Trinity Nuclear Test Site, located within the White Sands Missile Range between Alamogordo and Soccorro, New Mexico. The United States military opens the Trinity Test Site to the general public two times a year, in the beginning of October and April. On July 16, 1945, the first plutonium-based atomic weapon was detonated on a remote location in the New Mexican desert. The subsequent explosion of “The Gadget” was described as a blinding light of golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue, lighting up the early desert morning as if it were high noon. At ten miles away, spectators required dark sunglasses to look upon the explosion without damage to their eyes. The Trinity explosion did not produce a crater at ground zero, but left behind a small lake of greenish glass, dubbed “trinitite.” It is theorized that the intense heat generated by the nuclear fireball (in excess of 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit) liquefied the desert sand floor into glass and sucked the material into the emergent mushroom cloud. At such high force and temperature, the vaporized glass behaves like water in a typical cloud: it collects in the mushroom cloud, aggregates and falls back to the earth as a shower of molten glass. The extant body of glass, trinitite, was the only material that remained at ground zero—The Gadget and the metal scaffolding holding the device were obliterated.
Page rangepp. 222–225
Print length4 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)