One of the most devastating explosions ever on the planet—the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima—created a metallic material that was never seen before in a lab or nature. Luca Bindi, an earth scientist at the University of Florence in Italy, found the alloy while collecting microscopic debris from along the beaches of Hiroshima Bay. The new material is made up of iron, chromium, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, aluminum and more mixed in a homogeneous cubic lattice. Among them is trinitite, a glassy material that was created by the Trinity nuclear bomb test in July 1945. “[Bindi] rightly recognizes that if you want to find new materials, they’re going to be in unusual places.”