Quasicrystals and the birth of the atomic age

The fi rst nuclear bomb explosion led to the formation of a novel form of matter, known as a quasicrystal, with an elemental composition that had never been seen before. At 05:29:45 Mountain War Time on 16 July 1945, a plutonium implosion device was detonated in New Mexico on the Alamogordo bombing range, about 330 km south of Los Alamos, and ushered in the atomic age.