The key to finding this 'impossible' material might be a nuclear explosion

A DECADES-LONG QUEST TO FIND A quasicrystals - a crystal-like material with a seemingly impossible structure - has led researchers to an unlikely location: the site of the Trinity test, the first atomic bomb blast.

When the US military detonated a plutonium bomb over the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945, sand fused with copper cables that stretched to the top of the bomb's detonation tower, forming a glassy mineral called red trinitite.

From a sample of this mineral, Luca Bindi, PhD, a mineralogist at the University of Florence in Italy, and his colleagues were able to isolate a previously undiscovered quasicrystal. The discovery, announced earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed light on how these unusual grains form. It's the oldest anthropogenic quasicrystal found yet.

Quasicrystal alloys could be used in LED lights, diesel engines, and even surgical instruments. Thanks to their characteristic hardness and slipperiness, they could act as a substitute for the Teflon coating on cookware, and could be added to steel alloys to strengthen body armour. And because of their low heat conductivity, some types of quasicrystals could be tapped to develop heat-insulating coatings. The physical properties of these mysterious microstructures depend on two things: the elements that make up the material, and the arrangement of those elements.