In the New Mexico desert, a multinational team led by Luca Bindi, a mineralogy professor at the University of Florence, discovered a previously unknown material on Earth. The discovery concerns so-called "trinitite", the green glass created in the desert during the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945—the first nuclear test in history, part of the Manhattan Project. The majority of the fragments are green, however there is a relatively rare red variant that contains metals evaporated during the explosion. The new material is classified as inorganic clathrates, which are structures that are of significant interest to scientific research due to their potential for innovative applications in the fields of energy, semiconductors, and the storage of gases such as hydrogen. According to the researchers, the circumstances needed to generate it are so harsh that they are almost impossible to replicate in standard laboratories. This discovery, which comes from one of the most catastrophic events in human history, could open up new possibilities for future technologies. Bindi is already well-known for his study on natural quasicrystals, which is another frontier subject in mineralogy.