The article's title would be better if it was something like "the Vermont farmer who was the first to photograph snowflakes". The article isn't about the chemistry / physics, it's about how he collected lots of pictures. It's a cool achievement, just not reflected in the title
What bothers me is this: Popper once argued that to prove something, you need to falsify the claim. I am reminded of the story about "no such thing as a black swan", which held right up until someone brought a black swan into town from afar.
> Figure 1, a photograph of actual snow crystals, not replicas, illustrates a striking example of two snow crystals which, if not identical, are certainly very much alike. ...
The two very similar snowflakes are in the bottom center of figure 1, side-by-side.
Instead of extrapolating "there are no black swans in town" to "the world", it would be better to calculate the probability of no black swans being in town (given that there are N swans in town), based on hypothetical populations of swans and varying uniformity of distribution.
Some various coverage on Professor Libbrecht and his snow flakes...
KEQD: https://www.kqed.org/science/1536955/identical-snowflakes-sc...
Quartz: https://youtu.be/N2oJaW7Xiek
Veritasium: https://youtu.be/ao2Jfm35XeE
And if you want to dig deep: http://snowcrystals.com