She placed the card back in the drawer.
“By eye,” Elara corrected. “You’d take your unknown sample’s pattern, pick your three strongest peaks, and flip through the ‘Hanawalt Search Manual’—a book of numbers—until you found a candidate. Then you’d check the rest of the peaks. It could take days. A PhD student’s entire thesis could be derailed by a single mismatched peak at 2θ = 28.4°.” jcpds xrd
“Let me tell you a story, Leo,” Elara said, pulling up a chair. “About how we learned to read the language of dust.” She placed the card back in the drawer