Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds

hadin hand was a piece of a meteorite. 439 00:31:39,358 --> 00:31:44,655 But to prove the case, we had to find outwhere that rock really came from 440 00:31:44,738 --> 00:31:47,616 and see if we could gather moreof the sample to prove the case. 441 00:31:48,158 --> 00:31:51,203 <i>So Paul Steinhardt and Luca Bindi</i> 442 00:31:51,286 --> 00:31:54,915 <i>set out on an expeditionto easternmost Russia,</i> 443 00:31:54,998 --> 00:31:56,959 <i>close to the Bering Strait.</i> 444 00:31:59,878 --> 00:32:04,091 <i>The red marker shows the siteof the meteorite fragments.</i> 445 00:32:05,008 --> 00:32:09,763 <i>They were found along a creeknamed Listvenitovyi,</i> 446 00:32:10,180 --> 00:32:12,099 <i>of which nobody has ever heard.</i> 447 00:32:13,141 --> 00:32:18,438 <i>The expedition included membersof the original Russian geological team</i> 448 00:32:18,522 --> 00:32:22,317 <i>that had found the first sampledecades ago.</i> 449 00:32:36,874 --> 00:32:39,918 <i>They had to negotiate uncharted terrain,</i> 450 00:32:40,002 --> 00:32:42,921 <i>totally novel for Paul Steinhardt,</i> 451 00:32:43,005 --> 00:32:46,806 <i>whose outdoor experience did not extendbeyond</i> 452 00:32:46,818 --> 00:32:49,636 <i>the lawns of Princeton University.</i> 453 00:33:00,397 --> 00:33:03,817 <i>Myriads of mosquitoes tormented him.</i> 454 00:33:04,318 --> 00:33:07,696 <i>Here we see him with a mosquito netover his face.</i> 455 00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:10,365 <i>His sleep was fitful.</i> 456 00:33:10,782 --> 00:33:15,370 <i>Bears not only appeared in his nightmares,they were really out there.</i> 457 00:33:16,622 --> 00:33:20,584 <i>Their hard work to find fragmentsof the meteorite paid off.</i> 458 00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:25,172 <i>First inspection of their findingslooked promising.</i> 459 00:33:26,215 --> 00:33:30,344 <i>Now Bindi and Steinhardthad reason to celebrate,</i> 460 00:33:30,427 --> 00:33:35,307 <i>although they could not yet knowif quasicrystals were present.</i> 461 00:33:37,351 --> 00:33:41,647 <i>The X-ray diffraction patternof the newly found samples</i> 462 00:33:41,730 --> 00:33:44,900 <i>revealed the forbidden fivefold symmetry,</i> 463 00:33:44,983 --> 00:33:49,363 <i>proof there were quasicrystalswithin the meteorite.</i> 464 00:33:49,446 --> 00:33:52,199 Could you describeyour emotion when you saw this? 465 00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:56,662 I think everything-- time seemedto stop for me at that moment. 466 00:33:58,247 --> 00:33:59,248 As... 467 00:34:00,832 --> 00:34:04,336 Just seeing this imagejust told me immediately 468 00:34:04,419 --> 00:34:07,464 that everything we had beentrying to achieve for decades 469 00:34:07,548 --> 00:34:09,424 had now been achieved. 470 00:34:09,507 --> 00:34:13,762 Plus, we had verifiedthat this quasicrystal 471 00:34:13,846 --> 00:34:17,516 not only was formed in nature,but had been formed in space. 472 00:34:19,101 --> 00:34:22,312 <i>Leaving the arcane mysteriesof matter behind,</i> 473 00:34:22,771 --> 00:34:27,525 <i>we turn toward some more average rocksthat had come down upon us.</i> 474 00:34:27,609 --> 00:34:30,070 ...so we have some sticky mats here. 475 00:34:31,905 --> 00:34:36,534 <i>Arizona State Universityhouses a large collection.</i> 476 00:34:36,618 --> 00:34:39,663 The dirt that we have from outsidegoing into the clean vault. 477 00:34:39,746 --> 00:34:42,666 <i>But wild stories were waiting for us.</i> 478 00:34:42,748 --> 00:34:43,583 So when we go in, 479 00:34:43,667 --> 00:34:45,752 make sure you just step on thereto get the dirt off your feet. 480 00:34:45,835 --> 00:34:46,670 All right. 481 00:34:46,753 --> 00:34:49,464 <i>Laurence Garvie,its curator, guided us.</i> 482 00:34:49,547 --> 00:34:53,927 We have a positive pressure in here,just to keep sort of clean air coming in. 483 00:34:54,011 --> 00:34:55,637 -Got the dirt off? Good.-Yep. 484 00:34:55,721 --> 00:34:59,308 And we're also on camera all the time.Smile to the camera. Wave to the camera. 485 00:34:59,933 --> 00:35:02,519 But really what's important here 486 00:35:02,603 --> 00:35:05,355 is that, when we're ina meteorite facility like this, 487 00:35:05,439 --> 00:35:08,734 is to keep the meteoritesas clean as possible. 488 00:35:08,817 --> 00:35:10,694 You know, usually we think oftrying to keep ourselves clean. 489 00:35:10,777 --> 00:35:13,822 Here, we're trying to keep the greasefrom our fingers off the samples. 490 00:35:13,906 --> 00:35:16,700 So can you please wear some gloves,and I'll put some gloves on as well. 491 00:35:16,783 --> 00:35:18,660 And we're doing this'cause I wanna show you 492 00:35:18,744 --> 00:35:23,123 one of the most spectacular meteorites,that only fell a few weeks ago, 493 00:35:23,207 --> 00:35:24,875 and actually fell on Costa Rica. 494 00:35:24,958 --> 00:35:2