The Second Kind of Impossible (#020)

THE SECOND KIND OF IMPOSSIBLE: The Extraordinary Quest for a New
Form of Matter is the exciting, first-hand story of how Paul
Steinhardt, the award-winning physicist and Albert Einstein
Professor in Science at Princeton University, predicted a new type
of matter – the quasicrystal – shattering centuries-old laws of
physics. Steinhardt’s quest to prove the natural existence of
quasicrystals takes him on a globe-hopping scientific journey from
Princeton to Italy to the remote mountains of Russia’s Kamchatka
Peninsula. In a “suspenseful true-life thriller of science
investigation and discovery” (Publishers Weekly), readers are taken
along for the ride as Steinhardt challenges commonly held
assumptions about settled science, refuting skeptics and disproving
their notions of impossibility along the way. Steinhardt’s search
to prove the existence of this rare crystal structure began in the
early 1980s, when he first proposed the existence of
“quasicrystals.” While studying abstract tile patterns, Steinhardt
and his graduate student discovered a scientific loophole in one of
the most well-established laws of science and, exploiting that,
realized it was possible to create new forms of matter. In this
podcast, co-associate director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for
Human Imagination, Professor Brian Keating, and Professor Paul
Steinhardt explore a wide range of ideas from the discovery of new
forms of matter to string theory and the sociology of science.
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