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Science

The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter by Paul J. Steinhardt
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The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter

by Paul J. Steinhardt

Recommendations from our site

“It’s a window on the process of discovery, a blow-by-blow account of a long wrangle with theory and evidence. Paul Steinhardt — a cosmologist fascinated by novel forms of matter — relates his indefatigable decades-long quest for an ‘impossible’ material, the quasicrystal, with Holmesian intensity…This is a book offering a real sense of the collaborative, generous-minded aspect of doing science.“ Read more...

The Best Science Books of 2019

Barbara Kiser, Science Writer

“Paul Steinhardt, a world-renowned physicist, takes us on a journey through the history of our understanding of crystals. He explains how scientific orthodoxy came to a firm view as to the sorts of structures nature would generate.” Read more...

The Royal Society Science Book Prize: the 2019 shortlist

Nigel Shadbolt, Technologist

Our most recommended books

  • On the Origin of Species
    by Charles Darwin

  • The Blind Watchmaker
    by Richard Dawkins

  • The Elegant Universe
    by Brian Greene

  • The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
    by Sam Kean

  • A Brief History of Time
    by Stephen Hawking

  • Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos
    by Dennis Overbye

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