The next day we said farewell to our Russian support staff with mixed emotions—Olya, Viktor, and Bogdan. Even Bucks, Olya’s inscrutable cat, turned up to say goodbye. He was an unusual animal in that he was fully domesticated and yet thoroughly comfortable in the wild. Will had become very fond of Bucks during the trip and especially intrigued by all of his day-to-day wanderings. I watched them bond for one last time until it was time to go.
Olya gave us each a key chain in the form of Pelikan, a big-eared, fat-bellied creature that was considered good luck among the native Chukchi. She said she hoped it would bring us good luck in discovering a natural quasicrystal once we got back home. I continue to use Pelikan as my key chain today, and it is a wonderful reminder of some of the most good-hearted people I have ever met.
After a final round of goodbyes, we headed off for the airport to face our first test. The customs officials asked that we gather our bags in one place for inspection and then disappeared with all our baggage, passports, and paperwork. It was two hours before the agents finally returned and announced that we could board the Yakutia Airlines plane for Moscow. We had no idea what they had done to our luggage or the sample bags that were stuffed inside. We had to trust that they had put them on board the plane.
Once we arrived in Moscow, we waited expectantly at the baggage return and cheered each time one of our pieces came down the chute. By the end, we were relieved to see that all of them had arrived. Nothing lost thus far.
The team had to split up quickly for various connecting flights. Luca boarded a flight to Italy, Glenn headed back to D.C., and Mike was off to North Carolina. Sasha’s wife and children met him at the exit to airport security. They had been waiting for him in Moscow and visiting with family while he was on the expedition. After a round of affectionate hugs, our Russian colleagues Marina, Valery, and Vadim also headed off for home.
Neither Will nor I had visited Moscow before, so we had made arrangements in advance to stay a few extra days to tour the city. Once we arrived back at the Moscow Airport to fly back to the U.S., no one ever asked us anything about the plastic sample bags spread throughout our cases. So we saw no need to volunteer any information. When our flight landed in America, we also sailed through U.S. customs without anyone asking us about the material.
The rest of the team reported that they, too, made it through customs without being stopped. None of us was ever challenged and none of our material was confiscated. Our elaborate plan for distributing the samples turned out to be unnecessary, but I had no regrets about having played it safe.
All of the samples bags would now be mailed off to Florence for Luca’s review. He had been through most of the material already with the field microscope. Now, he would start the search for a natural quasicrystal all over again, combing through the millions of individual grains, but this time with the aid of an electron microscope.
Even taking the most optimistic point of view, the team had already acknowledged that the odds of finding a natural quasicrystal were extremely slim. The odds that we would ultimately fail had been pegged at ninety-nine percent.
A more realistic estimate, in my view, was much closer to one hundred percent. I had no regrets about having taken the incredible journey. But I was not about to fool myself. In my opinion, the odds of success lay somewhere on the spectrum between infinitesimally small and zero.
TWENTY
* * *
BEATING THE ODDS
I vividly recall one morning in our makeshift field laboratory when Luca jokingly asked Glenn and me what type of reward he deserved if he managed to identify a natural quasicrystal. Glenn, the wine connoisseur of the group, instantly responded:
“An expensive bottle of Château Margaux would be appropriate. And Paul,” he said with a sly glance my way, “should be the one to pay for it!”
The three of us erupted in laughter at the suggestion. The truth was that finding a natural quasicrystal would be worth much more to me than a case of Château Margaux. But we all sensed there was little chance I would have to pay off the bet. Even Luca, the most optimistic person on our team, put our odds of success at next to nil.
The real test would have to wait until the expedition was over and Luca was back home in Florence where he could examine our samples with proper equipment.
* * *
FLORENCE, AUGUST 20, 2011: Luca began by closely examining the vial containing our 120 “grains of interest,” the same grains that Glenn had already decided had nothing in common with the Florence sample. Despite Glenn’s pronouncement, Luca had treated the samples like precious diamonds, carrying them home from Kamchatka in a special vial tucked carefully in his shirt pocket.
Unfortunately, when Luca arrived back home in Florence, he discovered a serious problem. The 120 “interesting” grains had been packed for travel during our last day in camp, the same day we had been hit hard by an unexpected rainstorm. The storm-driven winds kept knocking over the tent where Luca was working. And as a result, some of the grains were lost or damaged before they could be safely sealed in the vial.
When Luca told me the bad news, my heart stopped for a moment. These were our most promising samples! But Luca quickly added that the missing and damaged grains were not, in his opinion, the most important ones. For example, his favorite, Grain #5, was unaffected.
That gave me some relief, but I was now becoming concerned about the volume of work that lay ahead. The rest of the team had arrived home and would soon be shipping Luca the dozens of sample bags we had split among ourselves for safe passage through customs. I was worried that Luca was about to be swamped with more material than one person or one lab could ever hope to manage. Luca warned me that the millions of grains might take months to study depending on how much time he could reserve at his electron microscope.
Take all the time you need, was my advice. If we were lucky enough to stumble across a meteorite grain, we would need to document it carefully and treat it with the utmost care.
Luca did not have any trouble deciding where to begin his study: his beloved Grain #5. Once he started examining it under his laboratory’s high-quality optical microscope, Luca realized that the photo that he and Glenn had taken in the field had not done it justice. Its most interesting side, in which many tiny metallic grains were embedded in blackish surround material, had been facing away from the camera. In fact, the more Luca studied Grain #5, the more excited he became about its potential.
Luca came up with a new way to determine the nature of the metal without damaging the sample. He would mount the grain on a stub and lean it at an angle inside his scanning electron microscope so that the electron beam would primarily hit the metal grains and not the silicate minerals surrounding them.
The good news was that Luca was working with the best high-tech equipment. The bad news was that the best high-tech equipment is always high-maintenance. The scanning electron microscope at Luca’s university broke down before he could complete his study and would not be repaired for several weeks. I knew that my Italian colleague had little patience, so I somewhat expected he would find a way to jump-start the analysis.
* * *
FLORENCE, AUGUST 25, 2011: I did not have to wait very long for Luca to find a solution. Just two weeks after leaving Anadyr, a fateful email arrived from Luca with the subject line:
Chateau Margaux . . . ?? I would say yes.
I could tell without reading any further that he was referring to Grain #5. The email explained:
As it happens, turning and turning the grain at the microscope, one of the small metallic grains detached from the sample (do not worry, there are a lot of them still attached). It is a small metallic grain approximately 60 microns along. It is pure metallic, without anything attached. I washed it in acetone and then I attached it on a glass rod with glue to make a diffraction study (the only study I can do at the moment; as you know our SEM equipment is temporarily out of order). And now the news . . .
Luca had buried the lead, whi
ch was uncharacteristic of him. But he proceeded to make up for that by electronically SHOUTING the last part of the message:
. . . I saw the FIVE-FOLD SYMMETRY.
I quickly clicked on the X-ray diffraction image attached to the email. I leaned forward in my chair as the image appeared and my eyes popped. It was a deceptively simple image that was full of meaning. Could this be real? I thought. It seemed too good to be true.
The image showed unmistakable evidence that the atomic arrangement in Grain #5 had the impossible five-fold symmetry that can only be found in a quasicrystal. And in this case, unlike the Florence sample, there was no mystery to solve to determine who had found the sample, or where or when. There could never be any doubt about its origin. Because we had personally witnessed its discovery.
I could have shouted for joy. I could have burst out of my office at Princeton and told everyone I ran into what I had just seen. I could have fired off emails to Lincoln Hollister and the expedition team. I could have phoned Will to share the amazing news. But I did not want to do any of those things. Eventually, but not yet. I wanted to stop and fully absorb the historic moment. This was not supposed to have happened. None of us thought it would. But there was the image, right before my eyes. It was a profoundly emotional experience and personal milestone.
I sat and stared at the image, thinking about each of the talented members of the expedition team, most of whom had been total strangers to me before our journey. They had happily volunteered their time, energy, and well-being to join our quixotic quest. Christopher Andronicos. Vadim Distler. Marina Yudovskaya. Sasha Kostin. Michael Eddy. Valery Kryachko, the man who set all of the events in motion decades ago when he found the first sample of khatyrkite.
I thought about Luca, with whom I had been communicating almost every day for the last four years. Glenn MacPherson, whom I had first met two and a half years earlier at the doorstep to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. And my son Will, whom I first encountered when he was stark naked and a whole lot shorter.
I thought about the fact that Grain #5 had been discovered at the Green Clay Wall thanks to Marina’s suggestion; dug out by Will and Sasha; carefully panned by Valery; identified on-site by Luca; immediately confirmed on-site by Valery, Luca, and Will; reexamined in the makeshift lab by Chris and Glenn; and then reviewed by the entire expedition team. The success this day was a testament to the diverse group of people who had committed themselves to our mission.
It was amazing to me that any of them agreed to make the long trek to the Listvenitovyi, considering how inhospitable and remote it was, especially because we all suspected the trip would most likely end in failure. More amazing still was that everyone gave their absolute utmost every second of the journey, never stopping to complain or question their sacrifice. Luca and I would now have the pleasure of informing all of them that their dedication had just been repaid five-fold.
Lincoln Hollister owned a big piece of this accomplishment, as well. He had not been able to join the expedition, but had been a vital participant in the search for natural quasicrystals ever since our first meeting in January 2009, shortly after Nan Yao and I had spotted the first electron diffraction pattern with five-fold symmetry in one of the tiny grains of the Florence sample. Lincoln was my mentor as I planned and prepared for the expedition, sharing insights and advice drawn from his distinguished career. I could already envisage that great big smile of his when he heard the news.
I thought about our donor Dave, who had funded our expedition. He had been especially generous after I warned him that the expedition might yield nothing and that the cost had increased by more than a factor of two. Dave doubled down and supported us without hesitation. I began to imagine how I would let Dave know that his gift was about to return great, unexpected scientific dividends.
There were many other people who had contributed mightily to the decades-long story, beginning with Dov Levine, who had been there from inception. It felt like yesterday that we were working together, but it had actually been nearly three decades since the two of us had first developed our theory of quasicrystals. We had proven that it was theoretically possible for the atomic structure of matter to have five-fold symmetry, as was later confirmed in the laboratory. That had led to the development of three-dimensional models of the new form of matter with Dov and with Joshua Socolar. Now, almost thirty years later, we were in a position to prove that nature had beaten all of us to the punch, making the first natural quasicrystals billions of years ago.
I thought about Caltech’s Ed Stolper, who, at a critical moment, gave me the impetus I needed to go forward and who also pointed me toward two more heroes, John Eiler and Yunbin Guan. Princeton’s Ken Deffeyes challenged me to follow my instincts to search for natural quasicrystals and introduced me to his protégé, Peter Lu. All of them would be thrilled and would appreciate the groundbreaking consequence of this discovery, as would Roger Penrose and David Nelson, who helped inspire the original ideas that started me down this path.
None of this would have happened if Richard Alben had not first introduced me to the study of atomic structure, or if Praveen Chaudhari had not encouraged that interest. And then, of course, there was Richard Feynman, who made me fall in love with physics in the first place.
There were, in fact, hundreds of scientists around the world, too many to name, who had applied their theoretical and experimental talents to help establish a new branch of physics.
How could I possibly thank everyone? I wondered.
All of these thoughts were flying through my mind, almost simultaneously. I finally forced myself to push myself away from my desk and walk down the hall. I thought a cup of coffee might help me clear my head before attempting to compose the first round of announcements.
When I returned to sit down, though, I was once again frozen in place by the amazing X-ray diffraction image on my computer screen. I took a long, slow sip of coffee and felt myself slipping into another grateful reverie. Here was a substance older than the Earth itself but fresh with possibilities.
TWENTY-ONE
* * *
L’UOMO DEI MIRACOLI
WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 5, 2011: “I recognize this,” Glenn said proudly as the image popped up on screen, “Allende!”
I laughed, knowing that Glenn was teasing me and making fun of himself at the same time. History was repeating itself but with a happy twist. A few years earlier, Glenn had used the same microscope to examine a similar image but had erupted with fury and contempt.
The image that had angered him was from the powdery material Luca discovered at the bottom of a vial labeled “Khatyrkite,” which was recovered from a former colleague’s secret laboratory. Glenn was convinced material from the famous Allende meteorite had been put in the vial, blaming “a capricious, if not overtly malicious, God” for the mix-up.
A lot had happened in the two and a half years since that episode. Luca had once again sent Glenn a sample to review, but this time there was no question in Glenn’s mind that it was legitimate. After all, he had been part of the expedition that had recovered it from Kamchatka.
So Glenn was delighted, rather than enraged, to find the close resemblance to Allende in the new sample. He had fully embraced the notion that our natural quasicrystal was, incredibly enough, a piece of an Allende-like meteorite. What he was showing me on the screen was striking new proof.
We were looking at a cross section of Grain #121, the second promising candidate Luca had identified since returning home. I had made the three-hour drive from Princeton to Washington to be with Glenn when he took the first high-resolution images.
To the untrained eye, Grain #121 looked like a big clod of mud surrounded by a finely grained gravel. But the innocuous-looking clod and all of the material around it were packed with important information about the birth of the solar system.
“That is a chondrule,” Glenn said, “the oldest part of a chondritic meteorite, dating back more than 4.5 billion years.” That
assessment alone told us the sample was legitimate. “The added material surrounding the chondrule is called the matrix,” Glenn explained, “which is normally composed of certain characteristic minerals.”
Chondrules and matrix are the two major components of a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. The same microscopic materials are found in Allende. So it was significant that we were now observing the same features as Allende in the new grain.
To prove the point, Glenn began gleefully exploring Grain #121. Using his electron microprobe, he measured the chemical composition at various spots in both the chondrule and the matrix. Chondrites contain a complex mix of minerals. Before taking each measurement, Glenn would predict what the composition would be, based on his extensive research experience with the Allende meteorite. He was right every single time.
“Anyone would see this image as classic Allende,” he concluded.
Just then, a more junior scientist in his group happened to pause at his office door and glance at the image on the screen. Glenn asked if she could identify the image. “Allende, of course,” she responded, as if it were a stupid question. Glenn and I smiled at one another with satisfaction as she continued along her way.
Upon closer inspection, Glenn found something important in Grain #121 that he had never found in Allende: tiny white chips. With respect to the chondrule, two of the chips are located at roughly four o’clock and six o’clock, as seen in the image below.
Since the chondrule itself had been cut in half during the sample preparation, the image suggested that the chips of material had been embedded in the chondrule, which was made of silicate, when it formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. That indicated that the white chips were also likely to be more than 4.5 billion years old.
The Second Kind of Impossible Page 26