Trinity Site

Today Bob Durkin and I went up to the Trinity Site.

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This is where the first atomic bomb was exploded on 16 July 1945. It is roughly 20 miles south of Bingham, New Mexico. Or about 15 miles from where I camped out recently hunting for fluorescent rocks.

My grandfather Joseph Percy Garland was up at 5:30 a.m. and saw the entire sky light up even though the blast was 150 miles to the north of El Paso.

The picture to the right is a piece of Trinitite under my computer microscope, magnified 60X. This is glass formed by the atomic bomb. Sand was drawn up into the mushroom cloud, and when it rained back down it had turned into very slightly radioactive glass. Like much glass formed in nature (and much of the 2,000 year old Roman glass) there is a slight greenish tint which is caused by trace amount of iron.

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Afterwards we visited Allison at her fantastic Blanchard Rock shop in Bingham.