The Atomic Bomb Marker Inside Your Body

upstart writes:

The atomic bomb marker inside your body:

It is 80 years since the first nuclear weapon test - codenamed Trinity - detonated above the desert in New Mexico. Today the hidden legacy of nuclear bomb tests can still be found in our cells - and is proving surprisingly useful to scientists.

It's in your teeth. Your eyes and your brain too. Scientists call it the "bomb spike" (or "bomb pulse") - and for more than half a century its signature has been present inside the human body.

On 16 July 1945, scientists of the Manhattan Project detonated the first nuclear weapon, known as the Trinity test, in New Mexico. The 18.6kt explosion lit up the sky and sent a blast of searing heat across the desert as a fireball lofted high into the sky. In the days that followed, white flakes and dust rained down on areas downwind. A now de-classified report from the time warned that radioactive particles spread over an area of more than 2,700sq miles (6,993sq km). And this test was just the start of the atomic era.

In the 1950s, there were so many nuclear bomb explosions above ground that theytransformed the chemical make-up of the atmosphere - altering the carbon composition of life on Earth ever since, along with oceans, sediments, stalactites and more.

Unlike the direct radioactive fallout from the explosions, the bomb spike is not harmful. In fact, it's proven surprisingly helpful for scientists in recent years. Some have even gone so far as to describe it as the "mushroom cloud's silver lining".

Why? Evidence of the pulse is so ubiquitous that it can, among many other insights, tell forensic scientists when a person was born (or died), provide discoveries about the age of neurons in our brains, reveal the origin of poached wildlife, determine red wine vintage and even unlock the true age of centuries-old sharks (see box: "The bomb spike's multiple uses").

And now it may also help to define a new geological era. In July 2023, a group of earth scientists recommended that its presence in a Canadian lake - along with other human-made markers from the mid-20th Century - should represent the official start of the Anthropocene.

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