The Second Kind of Impossible (#020)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.
0:04.4	Five, four, three, two, one. on.
0:13.0	Well, welcome everybody to the first episode of The
0:19.0	Well, welcome everybody to the first episode of Into the Impossible from the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human
0:25.6	Imagination at the University of California, San Diego. Remind you that
0:29.8	into the imagination into the impossible rather is a unique podcast that really aims to explore the boundaries of human imagination and curiosity in every endeavor from the arts to the sciences to technology and beyond.
0:45.0	And we've done episodes with numerous luminaries and intellectuals from
0:50.0	Nobel Prize-winning physicist to Pulitzer Prize winning poets to astronauts to everyday
0:58.0	thinkers and intellectuals around the world.
1:01.8	So it's a great honor and pleasure today
1:04.0	to start off the new year, 2019, with a podcast
1:08.0	with an episode of one of my scientific heroes
1:11.5	and mentors, Professor Paul Steinhart, who is the Einstein Professor
1:16.5	of Natural Sciences at Princeton University.
1:19.6	He's also the author of two books
1:22.2	for popular science audiences and today we're going to be talking about his
1:27.2	latest book which is called The Second Kind of Impossible, which is due to come out tomorrow January 8th.
1:34.0	So this is book launch Eve, a very, you know,
1:36.7	nervous time in any author's life,
1:39.2	quite similar to waiting the birth of a child
1:42.4	or Christmas morning, which for Paul was the birth of himself and also
1:47.0	Christmas Day, and Paul's birthday is on Christmas Day, shared with a famous person who achieved a great deal of fame throughout humanity, which is of course Isaac Newton.
	...

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