The Second Kind of Impossible

The Second Kind of Impossible

Paul Steinhardt

#3436 of 3,809 books · #503 in Science & Technology

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize (2019).

The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt's thirty-five-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. When he began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter—one that raises the possibility of new materials with never before seen properties, but that violates laws set in stone for centuries. Steinhardt dubs this new form of matter "quasicrystal." The rest of the scientific community calls it simply impossible. The book captures Steinhardt's scientific odyssey as it unfolds over decades, first to prove viability, and then to pursue his wildest conjecture—that nature made quasicrystals long before humans discovered them. Along the way, his team encounters clandestine collectors, corrupt scientists, secret diaries, international smugglers, and KGB agents. Their quest culminates in a daring expedition to a distant corner of the Earth, in pursuit of tiny fragments of a meteorite forged at the birth of the solar system. Steinhardt's discoveries chart a new direction in science. They not only change our ideas about patterns and matter, but also reveal new truths about the processes that shaped our solar system. The underlying science is important, simple, and beautiful.