What was the Trinity test?
The Trinity test was the first-ever detonation of a nuclear device. It took place in the Jornada del Muerto desert (about 55 kilometres/35 miles from Socorro, New Mexico) and entailed an implosion-design plutonium bomb being detonated on top of a tower. The resultant explosion occurred at 05:29:45 on 16 July 1945, and released the energy equivalent to roughly 20 kilotons of TNT, leaving a crater of radioactive glass three metres (ten feet) deep and 330 metres (1,100 feet) wide. Famously, Robert Oppenheimer stated at the time that he was reminded of a line from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’