Trinitite/Kryptonite

“What’s that?” Mark looks at Dan’s monitor. His friend is looking at a picture of some green rock.
“Trinitite.”
“What?”
“The heat from the first atomic bomb fused the desert sand. They called this stuff Trinitite. The books describe it as being jade-like. Actually it looks a bit mucky, bubbly like the middle of a mint aero.”
“It looks like Kryptonite.”
“Yeah. This stuff would have been dangerous to anyone, not just Clark Kent.”
“When did they think up Kryptonite?”
“Good question, Superman was first published in 1938. I don’t know when Kryptonite entered the frame.”
Mark does a quick search. “This site says 1943, in the radio series. Weird. Like a prediction.”
“Makes you wonder: life imitating art?”
“Except they’d been making artificial elements since about 1941. Fermi building his chain-reacting piles in squash courts and gymnasia. Transmuting Uranium 238 into Plutonium. Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia. Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.” Mark always excited by pioneers.
“Trinitite isn’t a new element – just a kind of atomic glaze.”
“Yeah, it looks the part though.”
“Plus you find it in the blast-crater of an atomic bomb.”
“It’s all about metamorphosis. We can make new elements. It’s alchemy.”
“Killer bomb-metal. Deadly radioactive rocks.”
“That’s the point. Science is power and danger.”
“Astronauts transformed into the Fantastic Four by cosmic rays, 1961.”
“Bruce Banner transmuted into The Hulk by Gamma radiation, 1962.” This is a conversation in which the web is the third participant.
“As if the human could be modified in the crucible of nuclear fission in the same way that atoms are. A new being with interesting properties. Change, powers. We created Plutonium, thermonuclear physics will make us supermen.”
“Like the cosmic-ray theory of genetic mutation. The mechanism that powers evolution.”
“It makes me think about the military personnel exposed to radiation in the pacific. Those 1950’s pictures of them watching the tests through bits of coloured glass. None of them developed special powers. As if the comics are processing anxieties about it. Yes, it’s dangerous to be exposed to our new bombs, but our magic rays will make us invincible.”
“The comic book plays out the big ideas on the scientist’s own body.”
“Yeah in films they always have to experiment on themselves.”
“It’s the only site at which to work out the promise and curse of science – the only thing we really own.”
“But in the real world they usually do it to soldiers.”