Paul J. Steinhardt

Not sure that I have a great deal to add to the previous reviews of this memoir of a career in science, though while I found it interesting I do suggest that the "extraordinary" of the subtitle is a bit of an overstretch. Call Steinhardt's hunt for anomalous forms of matter a monument to the value of asking awkward questions, as it took a lot of nerve to simply call the basic principles of material science if not wrong, than at least inadequate.

Summary: A narrative of the search for a new form of matter, first theorized, then synthesized, and then first found in a mineral collection of questionable provenance that gave tantalizing hints that it might really exist.

This is a real science detective story. It has all the hopeful leads and unsettling reverses of a detective mystery, and one where the lead character, in this case the lead researcher, finds himself in a situation far removed from the normal environs of a theoretical show more physicist.

It begins with the question of whether an impossible five-fold symmetry could be possible under some circumstance. Then Paul Steinhardt, and a graduate student, Dov Levine, began began looking for a loophole to the forbidden five-fold symmetry, and found it, suggesting the possibility for something they termed quasi-crystals. Meanwhile, in another lab, a researcher synthesized a compound that turned out to have the predicted electron diffraction pattern. It takes the two labs a couple years to find out about each other but it demonstrates that something that seems impossible can actually exist, hence the title of this book, coming from Richard Feynman’s response to a paper by Steinhardt, who had been mentored by him. It was the kind of impossible that defies known knowledge but has an intriguing logic to it.

The next phase of Steinhardt’s research was to discover whether such a quasi-crystal actually exists in nature–the quest for a needle in a haystack as it were. He and a student comb mineral collections around the world, looking for promising diffraction patterns. They strike out over and over again until they find one sample in an Italian mineral collection administered by Luca Bindi. Part two of this book describes all the tests to confirm that this tiny sample indeed has a quasi-crystal imbedded in it and all the arguments against it. Then another sample is discovered in Russia, but the scientist, a Russian official, will not share it except for an exorbitant price. Furthermore, questions arise about both samples and their provenance–until the field researcher who actually found the material is discovered and agrees to help them find the tiny stream and collect additional samples.

The third part of the book is the trip to this stream, in a remote part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Steinhardt, who has never done this kind of field work, is leader of the team, and against all the improbabilities, the challenges of mosquitoes, weather, bears, and the terrain, they find additional samples, leading to discoveries of other quasi-crystals, and clues to how this material was formed.

One of the fascinating qualities of this book was the quest that started with a theoretical question and eventually led to a remote peninsula of Kamchatka. For those not acquainted with the life of a research scientist, this account captures something of the excitement of pursuing a really interesting research question, how one question can lead to another, and the roadblocks and dead ends researchers sometimes encounter along the way. What we realize eventually is that all this takes over thirty years, and involves collaboration with a number of researchers from Russia, Italy, and all over the U.S. It is not the only research Steinhardt works on, but imagine spending most of one’s adult working life pursuing a research question. The combination of curiosity and sheer perseverance commands a certain kind of respect.

The other fascinating aspect of this book was understanding how research science works. Richard Feynman is not the only one to declare “impossible.” Some did so with outright opposition for good scientific reasons. This happens constantly in the submission of research papers and at scientific conferences. Steinhardt enlists his opponents on his research team, forming a “red team” and a “blue team” with opposing views. The opposing teams were good at recommending all the tests that would eliminate alternative possibilities. Eventually the opposition, formidable researchers in their own right, are convinced–but that took years.

This is a good book to illustrate the skepticism, the meticulous rigor, and the self-correcting character of scientific research at its best. The other wonderful aspect that arises out of this process is the international collaboration of people willing to share knowledge, samples, and credit, to advance a shared understanding of the world, indeed the universe. In short, this is a great book to see how science really works at its best. show less

The real life adventures of a theoretical physicist

Science has always sought symmetry. Einstein spent the last half of his life trying to fit the universe into a neat, symmetrical package. Anything that smacks of asymmetry is suspect. So a collection of multisided crystals was long ago deemed impossible to fit together. Think triangles, squares, rectangles and rhombuses as the limits. For good measure, the five to twelve-sideds were deemed impossible to even exist in nature. For the past 300 show more years this has been solid, unquestioned science. For someone to claim such crystals actually exist in nature was tantamount to claiming there was a new kind of matter. And that’s what The Second Kind of Impossible is about.

For three decades, Pau Steinhardt of Princeton has been piecing together the puzzle of quasicrystals. They are multisided crystals that can be manufactured in labs (and have been since the early 80s), but have been deemed a natural impossibility. Impossible, because they won’t fit together into repeating patterns like we see on bathroom floors. His quest to prove otherwise was deemed impossible by none other than Richard Feynman. Steinhardt proved everyone wrong, and this is his story, warts and all.

The business of “impossible” has a wonderful explanation. Steinhardt was a student and then colleague of Richard Feynman’s. Feynman loved to challenge scientists on their theories and findings. He would imperiously dismiss things as impossible. And that pretty much shut people up. But it turns out a Feynman impossible could actually be the compliment of a scientist delighted to find something not only new to him, but hitherto considered impossible. To get an impossible in this context was about the highest praise possible. And Paul Steinhardt has been following that dream ever since.

For a deskbound theoretical physicist, this led to an entirely new universe, all of it challenging. For example, Steinhardt had to find experts in geology where he knew nothing, and eventually led a government-approved mad expedition to Kamchatka in eastern Siberia. (Steinhardt was not only not a geologist, he had never even been camping before. And Kamchatka was probably not the best place to start.) He went through whole generations of grad students as assistants in his quest. He was ridiculed as naïve by the best in the business. One of those most famous scientists in the world said there is no such thing as quasicrystals, just quasiscientists. But he was befriended by an Italian scientist named Luca Bindi when no one would support him, and Bindi became his miracle man, constantly providing leaps forward in what many classified as futile if not mad. What they proved was no less than a new form of matter itself.

The matter they discovered was crystals within alloys of aluminum. These are not possible naturally on Earth, because “Aluminum has a voracious affinity for oxygen,” and the alloys they found were pure combinations between metallic aluminum and copper – with no influence from oxygen. They produced crystals never seen before in nature. Steinhardt had to trace the sample he found back through fraud, lies, non-cooperation and dead ends. Years of detective work led nowhere in his quest to find where the sample actually came from, who found it and under what circumstances. He was told by a world-class scientist he was wasting his time, and another tried to extort exorbitant fees from him to tell his story.

Steinhardt was eventually able to prove beyond any doubt the crystals came from a single spot in Siberia via outer space, because the isotopes of oxygen that originate in space have a different footprint than they do in Earthly matter. So once he (incredibly) found the very spot they were originally discovered, taking the measure of the specimens confirmed they were from an asteroid that either crashed or split up over Siberia 7000 years ago. The detective work here is nothing short of phenomenal. He used electron microscopes, atomic slicing, particle accelerators and a cannon in his quest. Sherlock Holmes has nothing on Paul Steinhardt. The mystery then shifted to how the crystals were made: what massive force could have produced such pressure, followed by such rapid cooling, to produce such impossible crystals.

The book is a remarkably exciting recounting of the decades, of two steps forward, one step back, of miracle funding, miracle discoveries, fabulous loyalty and teamwork, and ultimate success over the impossible. Steinhardt has peppered the book with humor, humility, personality and humanity. There’s nary a mathematical formula to sully the story. It is a joy to read.

One of the numerous fascinating sidelights was provided early on by an American named Robert Ammann. He had envisioned this non-periodic assembly of shapes years earlier. He was not a scholar or scientist; he was an intuitive amateur. He dropped out of Brandeis and became a programmer. When he was laid off, he ended up sorting mail for the post office. Yet he boosted Steinhardt’s search with his assumptions. He posited internal structural lines and geometric forms to multisided shapes. These lines were required to connect the forms/crystals with straight lines from shape to shape, or the entire structure would be defective. Scientists began to study Ammann. His insights were unique. Then he suddenly died of a heart attack at 47. And Science didn’t even find out for years. Such is the world of scientists.

What is remarkable to a civilian like me is that no one could conceivably construct a graphic of these multisided shapes all fitting together perfectly (without Ammann’s insights). You would come to a dead end after 20 pieces and have to start over. Again and again. We need the comfort of simplicity and symmetry, repeating patterns, and the safety of limits. But Steinhardt’s examples of generated artwork are beautiful in their very asymmetry, something completely novel. That of course, is the least of the properties of quasicrystals, an area so huge we don’t even know where to begin to explore it. Steinhardt has opened a can of worms like no other. Bravo.

David Wineberg

For this same review with images, see https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/the-real-life-adventures-of-a-theoretical-p... show less

A riveting read about the author's decades long theoretical and practical quest to unearth quasicrystals - a 3D equivalent of Penrose's famous aperiodic tilings in two dimensions. The initial parts skew more towards crystallography theory where there were some pretty intriguing connections made between quasicrystals and other areas of mathematics. Personally, I would have wished for those sections to be longer but obviously, the book quickly moves on to the 2nd and 3rd parts of the book that show more read like a thriller novel. Dr. Steinhardt and his team track down the origin of a scrap of long forgotten mineral in a Florence museum that showed the elusive symmetry they were looking for and their journey is filled with colorful characters (Tim the Romanian who peddles in contraband minerals for example :)). In the final section, they actually head to Kamchatka in an attempt to mine the mineral for themselves.

The autobiographical nature of the work was a little irksome for me because my (possibly overactive) imagination could always sense a certain bias in the narration (the author's comments on Nobel laureate Dan Shechtman for instance or the claim that multiple highly trained scientists were willing to risk a trip to Kamchatka on a mission that has a less than 0.1% chance of success by their own estimation - all of these might very well be true and I have no reason to believe otherwise but they take on a tinge of grandeur when written in the first person). But this minor nit shouldn't take away from the main thrust of the work which shows the incredible and obsessive extent to which such dedicated scientists go, driven by their curiosities, to expand our knowledge of the world. To sift tens of thousands of grains for days on end through a microscope when weathering an arctic storm in a flimsy tent in a bear-infested desolate corner of the world - there ought to be a word stronger than "love" or "passion" for that!!! show less