Debris from Hiroshima's nuclear fallout may hold clues to our solar system's genesis. Here's how
Hiroshima atomic blast
The USdropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945 was an epochal moment for humanity. While the devastation from the blast is well-documented, scientists have now uncovered that the nuclear fallout may hold clues to our solar system's formation.
More than 75 years after the nuclear blast, scientists studying the fallout debris in the form of glass spheres, strewn along the beach ofMotoujina, a small island in Hiroshima Bay have posited a theory. Notably, the analysed samples were first collected along the Bay byretired geologist Mario Wannier and his team in 2015.
Astrochemist Nathan Asset of Paris Cité University and his colleagues studying these glassy spheres said they were once concrete and steel that made up Hiroshima's buildings but had been torched in the extreme heat, before cooling off and falling back to Earth as glass-like beads.
Upon further chemical and isotopic composition analysis, scientists discovered that the beads showed similarities toprimitive meteorites called chondrites, which formed from interstellar dust and nebular gas in the early solar system.
"The formation of the Hiroshima glasses by condensation implies that they may be an analog to the first condensates in the Solar System," the study stated.
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These condensates, also known ascalcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs), contain oxygen-16 isotopes - a 'lighter' form of oxygen. The study said these isotopes may have been produced by Ultraviolet (UV) piercing the interstellar dust-gas clouds which formed our solar system's firstchondrites.
Another theory states that these isotopes may have been produced by specific mechanisms when the vaporised material condensed into liquid before solidifying further.
What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Japan was at the receiving end of only two instances of military use of atomic bomb during Second World War. About 140,000 people died in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and 74,000 were killed in Nagasaki just three days later.
The toll included those who died as a result of radiation exposure. Japan surrendered a few days after the second attack, thereby ending World War II.
(With inputs from agencies)