The rock came in a box labeled “khatyrkite.” It didn’t look like much, just a chunk less than a centimeter long with a whitish rind and studded with several dark metals. But when Paul Steinhardt got a good look inside, he saw something he’d been waiting years to see.
The quasicrystals nestled within displayed a bizarre symmetry that had never been seen outside the lab, an interlocking structure with no repeats. Steinhardt had been captivated by these almost-crystals since the early 1980s, when they were still a hypothetical form of matter.
But now, there they were.
To read more, click here.