The Second Kind of Impossible

by Paul Steinhardt

  * * *

  Hopeless. Several geologists told me the chance of finding another piece of our meteorite in the vast emptiness of Kamchatka was less likely than pinpointing a needle in the proverbial haystack.

  Have you looked at a map, Paul? Talk about impractical You don’t even have the GPS coordinates of the original dig site, do you?

  Colleagues warned me that I was putting too much faith in a sixty-two-year-old Russian scientist and his ability to remember crucial details of a long-ago incident that had no special significance for him at the time. Even if Valery Kryachko was capable of leading us to the exact spot where he had discovered grains from the meteorite more than thirty years ago, which everyone considered unlikely, the chance of finding additional material from the same meteorite was infinitesimal because the grains would be tiny, thinly dispersed, and hard to discern from the millions of other grains in the area. No geologist in their right mind would commit time and resources to such a crazy endeavor.

  I had to concede that our chances of success were close to nil. But at the same time, they were not zero. And as long as there was a nonzero chance of finding more samples and solving the mystery of their origin, there was no choice but to pursue and persist. My timing was dictated by the fact that Valery, the only person in the world who could point us to the source, was willing and able to go. It was now or never. Or so I convinced myself.

  * * *

  Not worth the risk; quit while you’re ahead was the message from several influential physicists.

  Luca Bindi and I should rest on our laurels, they argued. Our Science article had already convinced nearly all of the scientific community that natural quasicrystals exist. Why take the chance of going to Kamchatka and coming up empty or, worse, finding confounding evidence? Either result might further encourage the few skeptics who still question your conclusions and could raise doubts about your entire investigation.

  I understood that a failed expedition could put our credibility at risk. But I had been searching for supposedly impossible quasicrystals for nearly three decades, and as a result had become somewhat immune to the skepticism of other scientists. My Italian colleague, Luca Bindi, felt the same and our shared obstinacy had taken us down a number of blind alleys. But it had also enabled us to make some amazing discoveries and I was not prepared to put an end to that process. We could not let the fear of failure prevent us from doing our utmost to solve the scientific mysteries that remained.

  * * *

  Not fundable. Where would I find enough money for such a preposterous expedition? was a fairly universal reaction.

  Funding agencies would never provide financial support based on a convoluted detective story, the thirty-year-old memory of some unknown Russian mineralogist, and a few microscopic grains of material. The risk of failure was much too high.

  Just as everyone predicted, I received strongly negative responses from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, the National Geographical Society, and other notable funding agencies. Don’t even bother making a formal proposal, they cautioned me.

  I had not expected a traditional funding agency to consider my request, so I was prepared for all of the unfavorable reactions. I was also prepared when my own institution, Princeton University, declined to help. I knew the university had many other priorities and was generally more focused on less risky projects that directly benefited students on campus.

  My only hope was to find a wealthy and generous benefactor. But before I could search for such a person, I had to get consent to do so. Princeton, like most American universities, forbids faculty members from soliciting private monies because it might interfere with the university’s fund-raising efforts.

  Knowing this, I asked if I could proceed under the strict proviso that I prove my benefactor would never consider donating to Princeton University for any purpose other than supporting my expedition. Finding someone willing to contribute to a Princeton-led project who otherwise had no interest in Princeton was impossible, by their reckoning. Perhaps that was why they allowed me to give it a try.

  It must have been a surprise when I called the Development Office three days later to report that I had identified a candidate. I had found a wonderful donor with no connection to Princeton who was willing to provide me with the $50,000 that I needed for the expedition. After several weeks of investigation, administrators agreed that I had, to their admitted astonishment, complied with the terms of the deal. The donation was made to the university, earmarked for my expedition.

  Months later, when our projected costs soared because of a significant change in the transportation plan, I was forced to return to my donor to ask for more support. I was overwhelmed by his reaction. Without a moment’s hesitation, he graciously agreed to cover the overage, which was more than double my initial estimate.

  I remain impressed by my benefactor’s remarkable modesty and his continued insistence on remaining anonymous. I gratefully refer to him as “Dave,” a true friend of science.

  * * *

  Unachievable. Why are you rushing into this? was the reaction from every geologist I spoke to with experience working in Russia.

  This whole thing is much more complicated than you think, Paul. Your plan is unrealistic. You will never be able to get a team of qualified people together in such a short amount of time. Also, Kamchatka is a restricted area—don’t you know you need a series of high-level approvals from the Russian government to get near that place? It’s impossible to speed up that process. What a hare-brained scheme!

  These were fair criticisms. I needed to recruit a highly skilled team that was ready to drop whatever plans they might have to join the expedition. Ten months did not sound like enough time to negotiate the famously byzantine Russian bureaucracy. We would have to obtain permission from the Russian government in Moscow, the regional government in Chukotka, the Russian military, as well as the FSB, the Russian security agency. Visitors to the region are closely scrutinized because of Russia’s historic emphasis on the strategic importance of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

  On top of all that, we would have to organize everyone’s travel to Anadyr, the Russian town nearest the dig site with a substantial airport. We would then have to line up weeks of food supplies, gather equipment, and figure out how to transport our team from Anadyr to our remote destination at the Listvenitovyi Stream.

  One step at a time, I told myself. My first challenge was to find experts willing to sign up for an expedition that many of their peers thought was ill-advised.

  I immediately emailed the Russian geologist Valery Kryachko. He was the most important member of the team because he was the only one who knew how to find ground zero, the original source of the Florence sample. A sturdy man with a full white beard, Valery had years of field experience and was extremely capable, resourceful, and self-reliant. Fortunately, he not only agreed to go but was willing to do anything in his power to make the expedition a success.

  I also reached out to Vadim Distler, who had been Valery’s PhD advisor decades earlier. I knew the two of them had teamed up over the years for a number of expeditions to Kamchatka in pursuit of valuable ores and minerals. Warm and friendly, Vadim was in his eighties and an unrepentant chain-smoker.

  Vadim recruited Marina Yudovskaya, an experienced field geologist with a razor-sharp mind who had recently succeeded him as head of his division at the Moscow mining institute. She was from Kazakhstan and the daughter of two geologists. Tall, blond, and lanky with a relaxed, easy smile, she was the only member of the Russian contingent who spoke fluent English.

  The three Russians knew each other and had worked together for many years. On the other hand, I would have to build the rest of the team from scratch.

  Luca Bindi was a must. It had been more than two years since he had discovered the original sample stashed away in a back room of his museum. Luca was the only person who had been able to examine the material in its
original state, before it was sliced for testing and pulverized beyond all recognition. His experience with the initial sample, plus his keen eyes and manual dexterity, made Luca our best hope for identifying additional meteorite grains at the Listvenitovyi.

  To say that Luca was hesitant to join the expedition would be putting it mildly. He was definitely not a field geologist, Luca reminded me. So I had to do more than a little arm-twisting to convince him to go. I was glad when he ultimately agreed because I trusted his judgment and by now we had become great friends. The trip would give us another chance to work closely together on what had become a wild investigation.

  With a lifetime of geological expeditions under his belt, my Princeton colleague and former red team member Lincoln Hollister was also on my wish list. Lincoln very much wanted to go and would have been an extremely valuable member of the team. He had years of experience dealing with difficult field conditions. At the time, however, Lincoln also had an acute, but temporary, medical issue and decided there was too much of a risk that he might experience a medical emergency while stranded in a remote location where medical help was not readily available. He was the first to point out that an incident like that could endanger the entire expedition. Disappointed at having to withdraw, Lincoln agreed to advise and help plan the expedition. He recruited three candidates that he could personally vouch for: Glenn MacPherson, Chris Andronicos, and Mike Eddy.

  Glenn was an obvious choice. One of our former red team members, he was intimately familiar with the investigation. It seemed fitting to recruit our former red team “adversary” as the field team’s meteorite expert. No one was more qualified to scrutinize and certify our work than Glenn.

  Chris Andronicos had obtained his graduate degree at Princeton with Lincoln as his PhD advisor. Chris was an expert on the powerful geological forces that produce mountains, create earthquakes, establish fault lines, and bend and break rocks. He also had extensive experience in different parts of the world, including the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, the Al Hajar Mountains of Oman, and other areas with rocks and formations similar to what we expected to find in Kamchatka. I found Chris to be a thoughtful, articulate scientist with wide-ranging expertise and a highly creative mind. With a broad, powerful stature and a lifetime of outdoor experience, he was totally at home in the wilderness.

  Lincoln’s third nominee was Mike Eddy, an outstanding student set to graduate that year from Princeton in geoscience and begin his doctoral program at MIT in the fall. Mike was thin and muscular, a natural athlete who had set several track-and-field records as an undergraduate. He had spent the previous year doing geological field work in the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan Peninsula, not far from where we were headed. In addition to his brain power, we would be counting on him to provide some of the muscle we were going to need at the dig sites.

  Glenn MacPherson and Mike Eddy were both quick to agree to my invitation. But Chris Andronicos was hesitant. He was pursuing extensive field work that summer in the Sultanate of Oman and an unexpected detour to Kamchatka would interrupt his research. But that was not his only concern about joining the expedition.

  “I have to be honest,” Chris told me. “I am skeptical about the meteorite theory. If I were to join, it would be to map the local geology in order to look for evidence of a terrestrial explanation, such as superplumes or other unusual geological conditions that might better explain how the Florence sample formed.”

  Chris knew he was challenging my view that the sample was a meteorite. But having spoken to Lincoln, he also knew that the meteorite theory was incomplete. The presence of copper-aluminum alloys had yet to be explained. He felt alternative ideas, like the superplume theory, deserved further consideration. After all, no one knew what an object brought up by a superplume might consist of, since no one had ever seen material that had originated from near the Earth’s molten core. And perhaps we would discover other potential terrestrial sources aside from superplumes to account for the Florence sample if we went to Kamchatka.

  “However, I seriously doubt,” Chris said, “that you would be interested in bringing someone along on your expedition who is skeptical about your meteorite theory.”

  I had to laugh because I felt exactly the opposite. He was just the kind of person I wanted on the team. I explained to Chris about how I had worked closely with Lincoln and Glenn for two full years, even while they both vehemently opposed our theory that the quasicrystal discovered in the Florence sample was natural. I deeply value the friendly tension that exists between evenly matched red and blue teams because I have always found it to be the best means of arriving at the scientific truth.

  “Opposing points of view are always welcome and strongly encouraged,” I assured him. And with that understanding, Chris gladly accepted my invitation.

  With an international team of scientists now assembled, I knew we would be needing a Russian translator. As director of Princeton’s Center for Theoretical Science, I was acquainted with several postdoctoral fellows from Russia, one of whom nominated a former classmate named Alexander Kostin. The two of them had studied physics together as undergraduates at the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Alexander, who goes by his Russian nickname, Sasha, was working in Texas as a petrophysicist for an oil company. As it turned out, he had long dreamed of going to Kamchatka and was eager to join the expedition, even though it meant sacrificing time with his family during their summer vacation in Moscow.

  Finally, I decided to add more muscle to the team by recruiting someone I had known since he was a baby. My son Will. His father had never introduced him to the great outdoors, but as a geophysics major at Caltech, Will had gained considerable field experience working under difficult conditions in the Mojave Desert and the White Mountains of California. He had grown considerably taller than his father, and was certainly more athletic. Following the trip, Will would begin his doctoral program at Harvard.

  I was thankful that Will knew what to expect in the field and could help me prepare both mentally and physically for the trip. I was less sure about the price I had to pay for his advice. Suddenly, Will had the freedom to set the rules and tell his inexperienced father exactly what to do and when to do it. I knew he was going to get endless amusement from the role reversal.

  With the international team in place, our Russian colleagues took over the planning. Marina and Vadim knew how to function within the Russian bureaucracy. They spent months working tirelessly on the required paperwork, ultimately generating a foot-high stack of documents. They prepared, submitted, and pushed through a mind-numbing number of forms and letters. The fact that they managed to accomplish all of it in such a short amount of time was a monument to their experience, professionalism, and commitment to our project.

  In the meantime, Valery presented me with a meticulously detailed list of supplies that would be needed for the expedition. Someone would have to go to Kamchatka in advance, he said, in order to reserve all of the supplies and book the local transportation. Experienced with the area, he volunteered to make the trip.

  In the end, contrary to what all the naysayers predicted, we managed to recruit an expert team and complete all of our planning and preparation in less than ten months. The early success may have lulled me into a false sense of confidence, leading me to believe that the rest of our so-called problems would be just as easy to solve. What a foolish assumption that had been.

  * * *

  You took a wrong turn in this investigation. Glenn MacPherson shocked everyone by uttering words to that effect at a critical planning meeting. He almost killed the entire project.

  A few months before our journey was set to begin, I invited our Russian colleagues to Princeton to finish some of the organizational planning and to share scientific information with the rest of the team.

  Valery had just finished telling the assembled group about how he had dug a sample out of Kamchatka’s blue-green clay in 1979. It was shiny and almost entirely metallic, he said,
just like the one in the St. Petersburg Mining Museum. Shortly after he returned home from the expedition, he handed the sample to Leonid Razin, the Russian scientist who had sent him to Kamchatka to search for platinum. That was the last he ever saw or heard of the sample, Valery said, until decades later, when he received an email from me explaining that it had been the source of the first-known natural quasicrystal. He was understandably ecstatic to learn that he was personally connected to the story.

  Razin had apparently taken the sample back to St. Petersburg for testing and eventually discovered that it included two new types of crystal minerals, khatyrkite and cupalite. He had published those findings without ever notifying Valery. As part of the official process of laying claim to discovering a new mineral, Razin submitted a piece to be held in perpetuity at the St. Petersburg Mining Museum.

  At that point in the story Glenn, who had been listening quietly, suddenly spoke up. Loudly.

  “The St. Petersburg holotype that Razin submitted may very well match Valery’s recollection of a ‘shiny and metallic’ material,” he roared, “but the Florence sample, the source of the natural quasicrystal and the motivation for this entire expedition, most definitely does not! In fact, it is the complete opposite! The Florence sample appears to be dull and non-metallic.”

  Glenn had assumed all along that the two samples had been physically connected and that Razin had broken them apart so he could put one piece in the museum and keep the other piece for himself. But according to Valery’s description of events, that was a false assumption.

  “Valery’s story means the two samples were never attached,” Glenn said. “If they were never attached, what evidence do we have that they came from the same place? . . . and if there is no such evidence, is there any justification for going to Kamchatka?”