In a nondescript patch of high desert north of Lovelock, nestled between two dry creek beds, the only indication of where a 60-foot impact crater once was is a patch of tall grass standing out amidst the sagebrush.
As he sat on the tailgate of his Jeep, Taylor Wilson laces up his desert boots.
“What I love about these places, whether I’m looking for uranium or spy planes or atomic bombs, is you would never think this spot was interesting,” he says. “It’s just an average spot out in the desert. But little do they know.”
Wilson is Reno-based a nuclear physicist who became famous for being the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion in 2008 when he was just 14. Since then, he’s worked on a range of projects in collaboration with industry, academia and the federal government , with radioactivity being a common thread.
He was especially drawn to this lonely spot in the desert because of a single line in a crash report from 1967: Two pieces of debris emitted radioactivity five times greater than the normal background level.