THIS ROCK SHOULD NOT EXIST! 🤯

[00:00:00]This is from the first nuclear blast ever, July 16th, 1945. These minerals were literally created by lightning strikes and nuclear bombs. Structural quartz is quartz pushed to its absolute limits, where heat, pressure, and raw energy completely reorganize its structure. [music] These are quartz polymorphs. Same silicon dioxide, but forged from fire, lightning, and massive blast to create totally different atomic arrangements. Tridymite forms in high-temperature volcanic environments, often silica-rich lava. Cristobalite forms at even higher temperatures, common in volcanic ash and obsidian.

[00:00:35]Spewing volcanoes not hot enough? Let's get extreme. Fulgurite forms when lightning strikes sand, instantly melting into the glass tubes. These are literally fossilized lightning bolts as temperature hotter than the surface of the sun for a split second. And then, there's trinitite, created in 1945 during the first nuclear explosion. My sample is from the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. That white desert sand was vaporized and fused into this green glassy material. Some is still slightly radioactive. These materials are records of catastrophic energy, volcanic heat, lightning hotter than the surface of the sun, even nuclear detonation. Lightning, lava, nuclear fire. Thank you for joining us for this installment of Dave's Rock Show.