The Second Kind of Impossible by Paul Steinhardt

Author:Paul Steinhardt [Steinhardt, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476729947
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Did this person or this place really exist?

A leading Russian academician told us there was a very simple possible explanation: Maybe Kryachko was a fictional character and the Listvenitovyi Stream was a fictional place?

Razin was director of the Institute of Platinum, our contact reminded us. He was searching for valuable ore metals and may have been trying to obscure all the details for competitive reasons. Even though khatyrkite and cupalite were not marketable, Razin’s competitors would have guessed that they were discovered during the Institute’s search for platinum. If Razin had accurately documented the events and locale, adversaries might have been able to glean enough information to raid the valuable deposits. So it would be practically mandatory for Razin to create a fictional story to throw his competitors off track.

The explanation sounded plausible in a strange sort of unscientific way.

We double-checked the “fictional” theory with another Russian academician, who promptly disagreed. He assured us that Mr. Kryachko was not an imaginary character, but rather a known mineralogist. Sadly, he reported, Kryachko had died several years earlier.

With two disparate theories now in hand, we checked with a third Russian academician and received yet a third explanation. He reported that Kryachko was a Chukchi, one of the indigenous people in Chukotka. Kryachko would have been hired to assist Razin’s expedition and would have long since returned to his village in the tundra. Finding him would be a hopeless endeavor, we were told. And since he was merely a helper, he would not have any useful information for us.

So according to the experts, V. V. Kryachko was either a fictional person, a deceased person, or an untraceable person. Whatever the truth, it made no difference. The bottom line was that we were never going to make contact. Luca and I moved on.

Months after giving up on Kryachko, Luca and I accidentally stumbled across the name again in a different context. We were poring through a vast literature on Russian mining ores when Luca spotted an obscure article on platinum-group minerals discovered in the Koryak Mountains. The paper was coauthored by none other than V. V. Kryachko.

The same exact name? In the same exact region? Studying closely related minerals?

We were sure it was not a coincidence. But there was no information listed about V. V. Kryachko, not even a professional affiliation. So there was no way of telling if he was still alive.

We turned to the paper’s coauthor, Vadim Distler, whom we identified as a leading researcher at IGEM, the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits, Petrography, Mineralogy, and Geochemistry in Moscow.

My email to Vadim went unanswered for several weeks, long enough for me to worry that we had reached another frustrating dead end. When he finally responded to my note, Vadim apologized for the delay and explained that he had been unable to get to his office because of a personal illness and the harsh winter weather in Moscow. We made an appointment to talk on the telephone, and I recruited a Russian colleague at Princeton to help translate.

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