Curiosity Daily Podcast: How Life Expectancy Doubled in Just 150 Years (w/ Author Steven Johnson)

Learn how we doubled life expectancy in the last 150 years. Plus: “impossible” quasicrystals formed from nuclear bombs.

June 30, 2021

Episode Show Notes:

Additional resources from Steven Johnson:

The first nuclear detonation created "impossible" quasicrystals shaped like 20-sided dice by Briana Brownell

  • Castelvecchi, D. (2021). First nuclear detonation created “impossible” quasicrystals. Nature, 593(7860), 487–487. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01332-0
  • ‌Bindi, L., Kolb, W., Eby, G. N., Asimow, P. D., Wallace, T. C., & Steinhardt, P. J. (2021). Accidental synthesis of a previously unknown quasicrystal in the first atomic bomb test. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(22), e2101350118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101350118
  • Università degli Studi di Firenze. (2021). Quasicrystals in the first nuclear explosion [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkuLjTlUO7A

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