the thrill of the chase a memoir free pdf

He and Levine experimented first with styrofoam balls and pipe cleaners, and later with paper models. Since the late 1970s, Steinhardt had imagined that ‘forbidden’ crystals with five-fold symmetry might be possible if, on cooling, atoms were arranged into a space-spanning network of icosahedra.

This predicted the possibility of quasicrystals, with symmetries technically possible but extremely unlikely: the “second kind of impossible”. Then on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Steinhardt had given a talk at his undergraduate alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, where he explained to physicist Richard Feynman, his former professor, a theory that he had devised with doctoral student Dov Levine. Steinhardt’s story begins in Pasadena, California, in 1985. Until quasicrystals’ discovery violated them. Despite thousands of possible atomic arrangements, the rules to describe crystals were simple: the materials could have only two-, three-, four- or six-fold symmetry. French priest René-Just Haüy’s 1801 Treatise of Mineralogy established that solids contain microscopic building blocks and that all elements and mixtures thereof can, at least in principle, be found in crystal form, from sucrose to sapphire. After all, they upset nearly two centuries of scientific understanding about the structure of matter. Quasicrystals were first discovered in the 1980s, but the interpretations proffered for them were not accepted by many in the scientific community, bar physicists, for some time. This oddity results in unexpected rotational symmetries (different from, say, that of a square lattice, which repeats itself four times in a full rotation). In quasicrystals, they are still ordered but the pattern is not periodic: it doesn’t repeat. In crystals, atoms are arranged in a repeating pattern. The result is a mix of sober, lab-bound scientific memoir and rollercoaster adventure, packed with discovery, disappointment, exhilaration and persistence. In The Second Kind of Impossible, theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt relates his bold quest to find a natural quasicrystal, a form of matter with an unusual arrangement of atoms thought impossible for a crystal. This is no Hollywood blockbuster: it is real-world scientific derring-do.

To solve it, a brilliant theoretical physicist must overcome impossible odds, Kremlin agents, a vanished package, secret diaries and a trek across a volcanic peninsula. The enigma could link a speck of rock found in the dusty basement of an Italian museum to the evolution of the Solar System. In Russia’s far east, a motley crew of conspirators races against time to solve a mystery hidden for billions of years. The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter Paul J. Credit: Alison Forner/The Second Kind of Impossible, Simon and Schuster

The thrill of the chase a memoir free pdf