Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt was part of a study that investigated the wreckage of the Trinity Test, the first atomic bomb test. The study found that the incredible heat and pressure created by the bomb's detonation formed a rare type of crystal, a quasicrystal. These types of matter are deemed "impossible" and violate our current rules that are currently used to define crystalline materials. Former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the paper, Terry C. Wallace, says the quasicrystals could help us gain more informatoion about the nuclear tests that have been conducted around the world.

Read more about the quasicrystal from these articles in the Smithsonian and ScienceNews.