The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Search for Natural Quasicrystals

Quasicrystals are exotic materials that have symmetries that once thought to be impossible for matter. The first known examples were synthesized in the laboratory 30 years ago, but could Nature have beaten us to the punch? This talk will describe the decades-long search to answer this question, resulting in one of the strangest scientific stories you are ever likely to hear.