Interesting. Bring on the A-bomb foundries! Had this been discovered during the exploration phase of atomic bomb use we probably would have seen A-bomb foundry proposals.

There is a hypothesized process in this paper that sounds like a graduate thesis on its own.

'natural experiment' doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I don't know enough about chemistry to tell if this alloy has potentially interesting properties, or it's just interesting because it's something we weren't previously aware of as being possible.

Related: "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test" may 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155450 87 comments

This is really worth a read. Although the origin is an airblast, ground structures and soil is evaporated too into an inhomogeneous plasma. The relative fast cooling adds to the crystal formation.

Not the most economical manufacturing process, it has to be said.

This alloy is naturally the macguffin in a Godzilla and/or Sentai film.

Hey! ,this is great! next we can have moskitonium, londinium(heh), and washingtondcinite, rare valuable collectables for some far future alien travellers