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Science

It Came From Beyond ... In Buckyballs! 112

Posted by timothy from the good-things-small-packages dept.
ooky writes: "Scientists at NASA have claimed to have found conclusive proof that gases from outside the solar system can arrive on Earth (and other planets, presumably) in neat little buckyball cages! They've found a type of helium 3 that does not exist (nor, presumably, has ever existed) in our solar system in these fullerene packages, deposited in a layer around the Earth dating from the 65 MYBP dino-killing asteroid collision. Some of our own atmosphere may have arrived this way during the Age of Bombardment! For more info on buckyballs and what they are, see here and here." The article is boundingly enthusiastic rather than the least bit skeptical, so take it with a few mols of (fullerinzed) sodium chloride. Still ...
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It Came From Beyond ... In Buckyballs! More

It Came From Beyond ... In Buckyballs!

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  • I beg to differ; they have been discovered in Malaysia as Petronastowerene.
  • to the moderator-
    I was trying to lure them *away* from Slashdot!
  • memo to moderators-
    Since you are apparently being recruited from streetcorners these days allow me to point out that in the above post I was being sarcastic.
  • Around here 1970 is largely "Before Puberty".
  • Imagine if we'd missed out on valuable information like that.
  • Watch the above get moderated up
    Sheesh!
  • From the story the link leads to-
    "Buckyballs, lacy-looking molecules made up of carbon atoms, are also known as fullerenes and are named in honor of Buckminster Fuller because they are shaped like the geodesic dome he invented."
    If that's not sufficient, there are 2 other links in the sentence that begins "For more info on buckyballs and what they are...".

    Gee, I coulda had first post, but I wasted time looking to see what the story was about and whether there was anything intelligent I could add to the conversation. : )

  • I thought that hydrogen was fusion fuel and that helium is the product of that fusion.
  • You're absolutely right. I attended a seminar some years about this topic. The navy has researched this for sometime. He(3) is an isotope of Helium. Very rare. On earth is is produced during the natural decay of Plutonium. Very rare indeed.

    If fused perfectly (assuming my memory holds) it releases heat + water + hydrogen.

    What a great fuel for deep space travel. You get the energy from the fusion to propell your ship and as a byproduct water to drink and more fuel.

    The talk I attended discussed mining it from the surface of the moon.
    see this link [seds.org]. not sure if this is the same group but it is the same idea.

    And again this link [asi.org] (gotta love google). This one discusses fusion with deutrium. The talk I saw was He3+He3.
  • is the name. The year I matriculated was the year after Smalley won the Nobel prize, and our president's speech at matriculation was rife with references to this. That and how he didn't find male buttocks funny, but that's another story.
  • There's also a BBC News [bbc.co.uk] article here [bbc.co.uk].
  • Do fission or fusion reactions such as the ones operating when nuclear bombs explode create any? I'd imagine they'd make at least some carbon.
    • Man would I love to have a tank of Helium 3.
    So, get out your credit card and call Isotec [isotec.com] and order some!

    It'll probably only set you back ~$100 for a liter.
  • "The helium we found within the fullerene cages of Australia's Murchison meteorite, for example, is similar to the helium that existed when our Solar System first formed," Becker stated.

    Seems to contradict the presumption that the Helium is unlike any that existed within the solar system...

    Otherwise, interesting.

  • It appears one of the not-reading-too-closely people was me - I meant "reading" not "ready" of course.
  • Not likely. Producing Carbon requires about 20 times the energy of H->He.

    Star life summary [nasa.gov].
    Summary of massive star/supernova reactions [chapman.edu].

  • Most of the carbon in our bodies came from outside the solar system,'' Bunch said. ``We're all aliens.''
    Another detail in the Yahoo story which is not quite right. ALL of the carbon in our bodies was created in ancient supernova reactions. The only thing in our solar system which can create carbon is the Sun but it's presently running on the Hydrogen->Helium reaction (its early Lithium reaction wouldn't produce Carbon either).

    "We are stardust..."

  • Now our former undergrad professors who were ALREADY fascinated with Buckyballs [for no apparent reason] will NEVER shut up !!


  • Hmm and I thought that BP stood "before present" or 1970 to be exact!
  • Isn't it funny how some dude can tell everyone that an asteroid hit the earth 65 gazillion years ago and killed all the dinosaurs, and we all stand up and applaud them. To preface this statement after the fact, I am not trolling. I just find it amazing how everyone falls in line, year after year, with the same theories. I remember as a child when everyone decided that the dinosaurs had died from great volcanic eruptions, and the ash blotting out the sun. This of course led straight to the *ICE AGE*!!! Dah Dah Dah Dummm... Now we *know* for certain that a big fat hunk of dirt fell to the earth and crushed them :). What's wrong with a simple climate change theory? What's wrong with small mammalian creatures overrunning the earth, eating soft boiled dinosaur eggs? What, pray tell, is wrong with a bunch of guys with guns shooting the dinosaurs? Ok, the last was a bit silly, but is it any worse than a giant rock (Doomsday! Doomsday!) falling to earth causing massive destruction and a return to primordial soup?
    We are all sheep, following the "shepherd" wherever he may wander in his dreams, building reality on top of layers of hypotheses. It makes me sick. Reminds me of MTV and Cosmopolitan magazine. Oh, gee, were we all really derived from fish? Wow. Does the moon look larger on the horizon because we think it's farther away? Wow. That last one really got me when I read it a while back. Sure looks closer to me, just saw one the other day, thought it was gonna hit me in the nose. WAIT! That's what happened! The moon collided with the earth, then bounced back and began an orbit. There's my theory. Now let's all sing along with it and pat ourselves on the backs till we're sore, thinking how f***ing brilliant we all are. Let's award ourselves prizes for it.
    Why can't we get a life. There's nothing wrong with trying to uncover the mysteries of the universe. But accepting them as gospel truth for ten years, then ditching them, is a silly practice best left behind. "Scientific" truth has no more basis in fact than any form of Judaism (Islam, Hebrew, or Christian), Buddhism, Hinduism, or Jainism. At least the religious folks have some notion that they know little or nothing about the details of the creation of the universe.
    Now I'm sure I'll get all sorts of responses from people, yelling and screaming about how I'm stupid, and I ignore all the research, and that these theories have been around for ages. Unfortunately, the age of a theory, the research behind it, or my stupidity will not change history, nor will it uncover the truth about how things started, ended, and then started over again. Or whatever did happen anyway. In the meantime, you should continue to believe all those theories, at least for another 20 years, when a new one comes into style, and look down upon creationists, and atheists who don't believe in the big bang or the asteroid mythologies. They're out there, you know! Don't forget to buy tickets to see the latest asteroid-hits-the-earth-everyone-dies-except-for-s ome-hollywood-cuties-who-survive-and-rep roduce-in-a-now-perfect-paradise-world movie that our friends out west shove down your throat. I wonder if you will even seriously think about what I just said, or if your programming is too strong and it blocks it out.
  • Here's my attempt at connecting dinosaurs with buckyballs...
    One of the most understated theories of dinosaur extinction has to do with the Chaos Theory (or, more appropriately, Catastrophe Theory, in which there are six manifolds of states describing the being on the "edge of chaos"). Basically stated, it was their behavioral changes that "threw" the dinosaurs over the edge. As for buckyballs, their motion is chaotic as well. They are never at rest, and their position at any given time can never be measured (60 carbon atoms rotating and bouncing around...pretty hectic). However, chaos theory can attempt to predict basic trends, like how one can graph one week or one year of the stock market and compare similarities. Because buckyballs can be studied in a controlled environment, and since they're small and fast, perhaps the study of buckminster fullerenes can shed some light on why the dinosaurs really died...
  • One of the conclusions I came away with is pretty obvious: The more geometrically balanced a molecule is, the more stable it is. Typically, more stable molecules are also harder to create. Entropy tends to dictate lower energy structures.

    i have a slight corection, the reason the bucky ball is more stable(and most organic molecules) is not based on geometry but on resonance (sp?). in a bucky ball there is an extended Pi cloud due to the formation of of the ball. this extended pi cloud is what makes it _very_ stable since electrons like to be stablized by as many nulcei aspossible and teh extended pi cloud makes it so they are stablized by all teh carbons in the bucky ball.
    so yoy were close buts its not the geometry that makes it stable but the stability that forms the geometry
    just my $.02
  • Buckyballs were first discovered in Taco Bell bathrooms.

    First dates lead to the formation of enormous buckyballs often released into the atmosphere after the date is over.


    That's what I love about them high-school girls. I get older, they stay the same age... yes they do.
    --Wooderson 1976
  • I concur. Using terms like "extra sub-atomic particles" is just obfuscating the fact that it's just a relatively rare isotope of helium, with one neutron less than normal. The nature of the helium is far less interesting than the way it was contained. It doesn't sound far from idea (in Elite Frontier?) of containing anti-matter within organic molecules as a way of storing fuel. Not that it's in the least bit practical, but it's interesting to yet again see the overlap of science and science fiction.
  • But of course you can't forget one of the largest molecules known to man, the SearsTowerene!
  • I believe the correct name is Buckminster fullereen or something.

    Btw, you beat the Ph1rzt P0zt3rz, d00d! :-)
  • Sounds like a secure wireless alien communication channel to me. They are putting 1's and 0's inside the buckyballs!!

    Now we've successfully tapped the wire, I assure you we won't be able to find these sometime later...
  • And for those who don't have VRML, here's are GIFs of a spinning buckyball [arttime.com] and a flying buckyball [arttime.com] (look out!). (Note: some artistic licensing here, but these buckyballs are all just theoretical anyway, right?)
  • Even better than the above, Lego Buckyballs [lego.com] are new this year! (And you thought you'd need to resort to K'nex [knex.com] for a properly rendered buckyball!)

  • You probably don't want to hear this, but you were right the first time.

    "Brevity is the soul of wit," --Polonius (Hamlet Act II, sc. ii)

  • "Duterium and Tritium both have a *very* low binding energy per nucleon"

    Gah! I need more sleep. I mean very high.

    Sorry.
  • Damn. I really *did* need more sleep :o)
  • Well, in theory, you can fuse any two nuclei that are smaller than Fe, and still make an energy profit. However, the greater the binding energy per nucleon change, the greater the energy output.

    Now, Duterium and Tritium both have a *very* low binding energy per nucleon, and so the energy output when you fuse these two into helium 4 (Which has a higher binding energy per nucleon) is rather large. Large enough to (hopefully) be larger than the energy needed to preform the fusion in the first place. However, it turns out that the fusion involving He-3 and some thing else to form yet something *else* (I don't rightly remember, but He3 +He3 => some sort of Be isotope would be a good guess) yeilds an even greater energy output.
  • Why try and stuff O2 in a buckyball just to start a BBQ? Do what engineers at Purdue did, and pour LOX on a lighted grill (from very far away!).

    0.0 to cooking in 0.63 seconds!

    There's even an MPEG out there somewhere.

  • Does anyone know where the name buckyballs came from?

    Sounds weird.
  • But in my defense the article that is posted on yahoo now is different (and gives slightly different and much more detailed info) than the short article I prepared my submission from yesterday. Unfortunately I don't have that version cached, so I can't prove it to all you chem whizes, and I didn't notice anything weird in the statement as I haven't taken inorganic chemistry since 1994 and have never taken astrophysics. But I thought that it was a very cool story, never the less, and I am pleased more than I can say to have had the story posted, which I never actually thought would happen. Thank you, timothy!!!!

    --ooky

    "We're the scientists of sound/we're mathematically puttin in down/If lightning strikes, best grab a ground..."
    "My namesake medallion/Says never trust a Hal 9000..." - bboys

  • I don't know if it's actually possible to store molecules in a buckyball, unless it's one of the big ones. AFAIK there is only enough room for large atoms (or maybe small molecules like H2?)

    And I don't see any connection between buckyballs and "Literally puncture-proof tires", lightweight protective vests, and glass-like structures. AFAIK, buckyballs are very stable, self-contained molecules that don't tend to bond with other buckyballs. So their stability is only good for themselves -- you can't generalize that since the molecule is stable it must be possible to build stable things out of it. Things like Kevlar or plastic are built out of unstable molecules and form themselves into large polymers that has stable bonds. Buckyballs are already stable enough they won't be easily formed into polymers, and if you break some of their bonds to make them bond to each other, their stable configuration will be lost.

  • Just goes to show that it's possible to dumb down science without making it any easier to read.

    This is _neat_ stuff, and what do we get from the Yahoo(tm) who wrote it? "Weird gases from outer space arrived on Earth during a dinosaur-killing asteroid strike 65 million years ago."

    Weird Gases? The Big Space Rock? The Killer Asteroid? Come ON Yahoo, surely you can get a reporter who doesn't have to insult us with Sunday tabloid-style writing. (Not to mention that most of the hypotheses are reported as incontrovertible facts)

    Bottom line: This story could have been written clearly, informatively, and intelligently while being just as understandable (or more so). It wasn't, by a country mile.

    Am I the only one bothered by this?

    Ah well. Off to find some coffee.

  • Rubbish. The term Buckyballs is a corruption on the chemical name Buckminsterfullerine (C60), the most well known of the fullerines. I don't know who coined the phrase Buckyballs first, but Prof. Sir Harry Kroto certainly used the phrase on several occasions while I was at Sussex doing my D.Phil.... even before the molecule had been isolated. Not many people know this, but John Hare (University of Sussex) who was one of the first people to make C60 in bulk, made the first big breakthroughs using some old vacuum equipment and some welding kit in what was basically a broom cupboard. Amazing guy. John Hare now does lots of fun things, look at for example. Back to C60... Check out the fullerine homepage at the university of Sussex: http://www.susx.ac.uk/Users/kroto/ For some more info, the following paper is a good read: C60: Buckminsterfullerene, the celestial sphere that fell to earth, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 1992, 31, 111. Cheers! Tim (Tango Charlie, i.e. T.C. are my initials)
  • i remember that.. I made one of those in Sr. Chem class, using styrofoam balls and straws.
    Knowing about the structure, I can see how a gas molicule could be trapped inside one of these things.. pretty neet
    well, that was my 2cents worth..
    --DV
    "The wolf and I are on a first name basis..."

  • There is the another molecule but with remarkable properties - it seems to absorb energy which completely disappears - defying the law of conservation of mass/energy. So as you pump more and more energy into it you have less and less to show. It also seems to repel other molecules called 'customerines'. Some bizarre porperties. Oh, the name of the molecule? MillieniumDomeazine.

    (for all u merkins out there - forget it) *grin*

    Liam
    --

  • It'll probably only set you back ~$100 for a liter.



    Liter is a unit of volume, which can just as easily contain vacuum. Which phase it the helium 3 in, liquid? If it's in the gaseous phase, what pressure is it at? Or to make this all really simple, just how many atoms of Helium 3 would I be getting for my money?

  • I don't think I would be complaining about coming in at ONLY 24th. And what is really cool about this is that it isn't a specially built supercomputer, it is a bunch of clustered NetFinity Machines. This once again proves the power of Linux.
  • I think that what they meant to say was that the ratio of Helium 3 to Helium 4 was much more than what would naturally be found in our solar system.
  • Fuller may also have designed structures using octagons, but buckyballs are made using hexagonal and pentagonal frames.
  • I've said it all along! Why it seems like yesterday I told my high-school science class: "I think we're all aliens. The carbon of our bodies was brought from outside the solar system by killer asteroids. It was in the form of buckyballs filled with cosmic helium. It's so clear - don't you see?"

    But they laughed at me! Laughed! The fools... they'll be sorry... they'll all be sorry!

  • You can only trap small nobel gas and metal atoms. Typically, covalent elements will react with the fullerene. Its been tried with hydrogen, e.g., look here [lanl.gov], here [lanl.gov], and here [lanl.gov].
  • Sire, you remember that third planet of the Sol system I have been studying recently?

    Yes Grok

    Well, my research indicates that the reptilian lifeforms currently inhabiting it have reached the end of their evolutionary path. The smaller mamalian species are being starved out of existence...

    I see, Grok. Well fire a few mega-planet-fscking meteors at it using the mega-planet-fscking long range cannon.

    Very good sire.

    Oh, and put a few buckyballs in with the ammo so that the mammalian descendents will know that we helped them out...

  • Surely this sort of molecular nesting could have medical uses. A modified buckyball could be used to selectively deliver medicines to specific parts of the body. This of course has the opposite arguments as it could be used in chemical warfare but for conditions such as cancer, internally targeted drug delivery systems could decrease the doses of chemotherapy and increase the effectiveness.
  • If the Bucky ball came first how did the Bucky ball let it inside? If the He3 came first how did it get inside the Bucky Ball. or did they appear at the same time together?
  • Okay, from a layman's perspective, let me see if I get this:

    -Buckyballs are molecules composed (usually) of 60 carbon atoms, linked together to form a soccerball-like shape.

    -They're damn strong and resilient.

    -You can store smaller molecules inside them.

    Okay, my question is - if we could mass-produce these, what kinds of products could Joe Consumer expect to see featuring buckyball "technology"?

    -Literally "puncture-proof" tires
    -lightweight protective vests for police and military use. If these things are as light as one would assume, they'd be more effective than current Kevlar.
    -A buckyball-silicon mix that could be formed into glass-like structures, lightweight and superstrong for use in construction.

    Maybe I'm off-base, but it seems like the benefits of this discovery may be one of the biggest revolutions to hit the economic community in a long while.

    Could someone patent buckyball-making technology, or the process involved in creating them? Seems like another anti-trust lawsuit waiting to happen.

    Microsoft Buckyball 2001, I can see it now...

    ~Matt Nute
  • It is THE most ugly building, with the single exception of the Mwheel, which stalks me all over Westminster (where I go to school). And it's in the wrong place, Big Ben was designed to produce a clever optical illusion, looking tall and thin, the wheel provides a new frame of reference, and Big Ben now looks short and fat.
  • wow. an article on slashdot that wasn't all hot air... oops i mean ... sorry bad joke
  • i know. i wasn't sure how to spell his name.
  • buckmeinster (bucky) fuller theorized their existence
  • BUCKYBALL NAME COME FROM BUCKMINSTER FULLER!!! FULLER KNOWN FOR DESIGN GEODESIC DOME!!! MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF CARBON ATOMS IN BUCKYBALL SIMILAR TO SHAPE OF FULLER GEODESIC DOME!!! THEREFORE SCIENTIST NAME IT BUCKYBALL IN HONOR OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER!!!
  • First, its clear from the cnn article that what they found was simply He3, which is not found naturally on earth, and is instead gotten from the refinement process of plutonium. He4, the much more common isotope, is found in large underground deposits. As far as uses for He3, first on my mind is its use in cryogenics. One of the most common methods of acheiving very low temperatures (down to .008 K) involves the use of a He3 He4 mixture in what is called a dilution refridgerator. In my lab I have something like 30 liter-atmospheres of He3 that I use for just this purpose. Talk about He3 for use as fusion fuel notwithstanding (and something I'm not at all aware of), He3 is already a very important isotope.

  • Various people here and in the articles linked from the story have gone on about using Fullerines as a drug delivery system.

    However it has also been stated that fullerines are incredibly stable.

    So how do the drugs (or indeed anything else carried by the fullerine) get out of the bucky ball and actually delivered?

  • Named after Buckminster Fuller. The chemical formula is C60 and the actual name is "Buckminsterfullerene". Who said scientists don't have a sense of humor? ;)

    --
  • Maybe it was a delivery of nano-soccerballs gone astray : )

    65 MYBP? Million years before petroleum?

  • The most likely source of the extraterrstrial He-3 isn't beyond our solar system, more to the center of it. The Sun produces lots of He-3 and He-4 which flies out of the chromosphere, we call this the solar wind. AFAIK buckyballs form naturally when you flash-boil carbon (something that would be happening in lots of places in the solar system due to the heat of formation of the early solar system). During this time of the buckyball formation He would get itself trapped in the middle of these molecules. I highly doubt few if any of our atmospheric gases arrived by asteroid. Some of it would have been collected from the acretion disk and some would have been formed in chemical reactions from high energy particles (alpha particles and high energy photons) whacking into the surface of the Earth. Probably in the next two centuries He-3 will end up causing a Helium Rush to the moon. He-3 is VERY nice for fusion reactions and is also very useful for cooling things to very low temperatures, things like superconductors.
  • Um, I can't find any plutonium that emits He-3, maybe you ought to check a table [bnl.gov] before making such claims.

    Also, there is no way that fusing He-3 gets you water and hyrogen. What it does get you (when you do He-3 + H-2) is a proton (i.e. a hyrdogen nucleus) which can be chemically burned to form water at the expense of your breathing oxygen. Not a good deal for long term space travel.

    I highly doubt that He-3 + He-3 fusions gets you oxygen. If you think that it does, please show me a source.
  • Read "unlikely" as "impossible" and yes. At least in any sense useful for this discussion.
  • I am not sure if you think that you can actually store antimatter inside buckyballs or not, so many pardons if I seem patronizing.

    If you had an atom of, say, anti-He-4 inside a molecule of C60, the positron cloud of the He would very quickly interact with the electron cloud of the carbon atoms (i.e. before you can blink 4 electrons will have annihilated with 4 positrons). Additionally, I would guess that not long after that the bare anti-He nucleus would either be forcefully ejected or annihilated by a carbon nucleus. Not a very practical storage arrangement.
  • I wonder whether one can trap oxygen inside these buckyballs. If one can get enough stuffed inside and mass produce them, they'd be the perfect lighterfluid for BBQs, even better, one could mix them with normal charcoal to make "super"-charchoal - burns fast and is easy to light - no more lighterfluid aftertaste on them ribs...
  • It looks like there's a lot of research and stuff, but what are we really doing with these things? What's the hold-up?
  • I'm fairly certain that there is only *one* type of Helium 3 :o)

    And while it may not occur on earth in any amount worth thinking about, it *does* occur with in our solar system. It is believed that many asteriods contain it, and that one of the most profitable space bussinesses would be mining it, and bringing it back to earth.

    Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Helium 3 makes a better fusion fuel that the classic Hydrogen 2 & 3 mix, and his fact combined with its complete scarcity make it currently the most valuable substance known to mankind.

    Man would I love to have a tank of Helium 3.

  • Silicon buckyballs? Hmm, 'twill be interesting to have stable silicon buckyballs... however AFAIK, Si-Si bonds tend to be quite unstable -- there are things like silanes (similar to molecules in petroleum but with silicon instead of carbon) but silanes are very unstable and spontaneously combust or decompose in some way. A buckyball configuration of silicon *might* stabilize the bonds, but still... those Si-Si bonds tend to broken in favor of Si-O bonds.

  • It might be possible to trap molecules into a buckyball, but (as far as I know) no one has succeeded at that yet.

    I think it is already possible to put atoms inside but i know of failed experiments to put CO (carbon monoxide) inside. Because of the stability of the buckyball you would need very high pressures of the molecules you want to push into the balls.

    The other possibility is to catch the molecule while the buckyball is being formed, but conditions under which these things are being made are so bad (high temperatures and stuff) that normal molecules do not survive this. Atoms can of course survive, so this is probably the way in which the atom-buckyballs are made.

    And for the ideas to put drugs inside to make effective drug-deliver-agents (mentioned in another reply), those big molecules will probably not fit inside the cage. Furthermore there has no research been done on the toxicity of fullerenes. They have six-rings which are very much like benzene (C6H6), which can cause cancer and other bad diseases. I don't know if i want to eat buckyballs, especially not when I'm sick already!

    So the theoretical possibilities of buckyballs might be very big, but in practise the use is still very limited.

  • Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Helium 3 makes a better fusion fuel that the classic Hydrogen 2 & 3 mix, and his fact combined with its complete scarcity make it currently the most valuable substance known to mankind.
    Well, first thing to point out is that there are, currently, no helium-3 fusion reactors, so its extreme value is somewhat speculative. It is valuable, in part because of its scarcity, its primary use is in physics apparatus, notably in helium dilution refrigeration equipment. A dilution refrigerator can cool something down to millikelvins. Helium-3 is the end-product of the beta decay of a tritium atom, the primary source of it at the moment is from "expired" fusion-boosted nuclear weapons, those which don't generate their tritium from lithium fission but store it in molecular form (I believe that it's mostly used in dial-a-yield weapons).

    As to why it makes a better fusion fuel than the classic H-2 + H-3, it's because deutrium-tritium fusion releases energy and a high energy neutron. Neutrons are messy things to play with, they tend to stick onto nuclei and change their isotope numbers, making the surrounding materials radioactive (sometimes dangerously so). This observation, in fact, led to the "mad scientist" myth. It was noticed that certain radioactive materials could activate other things just by being put into contact with them. This "radioactive infection", it was reasoned, could then spread to other materials, until the entire planet was a fissioning mass of radioactivity. A single scientist with a briefcase of this material and a grudge could destroy the world!

    Ahem, OK, getting back to He-3, The fusion of He-3 and H-2 produces He-4 and a high energy proton. Fast protons don't activate their surroundings, and it's easy to extract energy from them. The result is expected to be a much cleaner-burning fusion fuel.

  • You can't turn buckyballs into lighter fluid, but you can turn lighter fluid into buckyballs - some of the soot deposited from the flame (e.g. onto a spoon) will contain some buckyballs. (Candles are a better source of soot, but the principle is the same for any carbon-based fuel source.) Could you build buckyballs from other elements e.g. silicon? It's been years since I did high school chemistry, so I'm a little rusty (to put it mildly!)
  • No he didn't he designed dome shaped structures whit a similar structure as the bucky balls, the guys theorizing about the carbon molecules were inspired by his work.

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • They are named after Buckminster Fuller, a arcitect who designed spherical structures out of hexagonal and octagonal frames. These were identical to the buckyballs (Carbon 60) structure.

  • The purpose of science... (Score:3)

    by slothbait ( 2922 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @08:26AM (#1184243)
    ...is not to find theories that are true, but rather to find theories that are less wrong.

    Scientists understand this. It is the mass media, and the general populace who do not. Scientists are charged with creating models that are more accurate than the previous model. They understand that it too will be replaced by an even more accurate model in time.

    Science says nothing of truth. We do not "know" that our laws of physics are "right" or "true". All we do know is that they fit the data very well. That's really all that we can ever hope for: to fit the data. If a theory or model fits the data, then it is useful and we use it.

    This is a rather subtle point, that I think is lost on the masses. I think that most lack the scientific education needed to really grasp this. At this point, I could go off on a rant about American education, but I'll leave that to other Slashdot readers.

    Still, your point is well taken. People that buy into the current theory wholesale are misleading themselves. However, I maintain that scientists don't buy into them wholesale. They know that such theories are fleeting. Its the largely uneducated media who distorts the picture.

    --Lenny

  • Interested in more? (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @04:20AM (#1184244)
    More information here [unifi.it], here [ornl.gov] (video clip included), here [swarthmore.edu], and here [k12.id.us].

    --

  • Any Org. Chems out there? (Score:3)

    by jabber ( 13196 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @06:17AM (#1184245) Homepage
    Several years ago, I took an Organic Chemistry course. Very cool stuff..

    One of the conclusions I came away with is pretty obvious: The more geometrically balanced a molecule is, the more stable it is. Typically, more stable molecules are also harder to create. Entropy tends to dictate lower energy structures.

    Think of a water molecule. It has a positive dipole where the Oxygen sits, and a negative dipole where the hydrogen sits. The number of electrons in a bond, and the charges of the atoms involved dictate a certain geometry to the molecule.

    A buckyball is pretty much spherical, composed of cyclohexane and cyclopentane (six and five-carbon rings) like a soccer ball. This is a very stable structure. It would take tremendous energy to break it. Contrast most other hydrocarbons, like octane, which are long chains of carbon, and are easily broken.

    So using buckminsterfullerene to deliver Oxygen to charcoal is not going to work well. But, what it is being considered for is the encapsulation of radio-active isotopes for injection into the human body, for example. This way, a radioactive tracer is still useful, but keeps the bad stuff confined, and not bonding with other molecules.

    As a side note, Arthur C. Clarke proposes that bucky-tubes (buckyballs, openned and connected with nanotubes - built up from individual atoms by nanites) could be used to make extremely long, extremely strong and extremely light cables for building an elevator to orbit.

  • VRML Bucky Ball (Score:3)

    by philj ( 13777 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @01:59AM (#1184246)
    If you don't know what a Bucky Ball is, Here's [compuchem.com] a VRML model of one that you can look at in your browser.

  • Helium 4 (Score:3)

    by Robert Link ( 42853 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @05:39AM (#1184247) Homepage
    Mostly true. It turns out that most of the 4He around also dates back to the big bang. Although 4He is produced in stars, much of that is either further processed into heavier elements, or it is trapped in the stellar remnant. Consequently, the present-day abundance of 4He is not too different from its primordial value of about 1/4.


    There is also another way to produce 4He that, while insignificant on a cosmic scale, accounts for most of the 4He in the earth's crust. It turns out that an alpha-particle is nothing but a 4He nucleus, and so alpha-decay produces helium as a byproduct. On earth, helium produced this way gets trapped in pockets in the crust (much like natural gas), and so can't escape into space. Atmospheric helium, on the other hand, tends to escape into space. So, what you have is helium in the atmosphere (including most of the 3He-laden primordial helium) escaping into space, and being replaced by helium produced in radioactive decay (which doesn't produce 3He at all), and that, I believe, is why the abundance of 3He on the earth is lower than in the solar system at large.


    -rpl

  • Here is the press release (Score:3)

    by Raindeer ( 104129 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:09AM (#1184249) Homepage Journal
    The press release can be found here: http://george.arc.na sa.gov/dx/basket/pressrelease/00_20AR.html [nasa.gov]

    A preview of the article will be posted at: http://www.pnas.org [pnas.org]

    It is research so it should be peer reviewed. But the source seems good.

  • buckyball RAM (Score:3)

    by b_pretender ( 105284 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:19AM (#1184250)
    At Michigan State University, they are theorizing about doubled Bucky Balls, connected with a nanotube (Like a Tylenol capsule). A charged particle sits inside, and determines a value based on which half of the bucky-capsule it sits. According to the poster on the wall, the RAM will use no power to store information, only power to read and change data.

    I tried very hard to find a URL, for this, but the closest I can do is: http://www.cse.msu.edu
    It is the URL for the department where the poster is hanging on the wall.

    It'd be nice for some space gasses to contain these since they would be nearly impossible to mass produce. Does anyone have any other ideas for resources that might be gained from the gas?

  • Re:forget lighterfluid (Score:3)

    by Dienyddio ( 161154 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:25AM (#1184251)
    Sure you can trap just about anything inside a buckyball, current trends are focused on trying to trap large metal atoms inside them in the hope of producing superconductors.

    Traped Oxygen wouldn't cause bucky balls to burn all that well... Buckyballs are _very_ stable (Surviving ground zero of a planet killer impact) the amount of energy you would need to pump into one of these to burn would probably be more that you would get out... That said i can't confirm that this is the case as i do not have the data to hand.

  • Just thought I'd pass along some interesting information.... The buckyball (or buckminsterfullerene) is technically termed isocahedral C60. It's a molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms arranged to form a sphere consisting of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. It was discovered by Richard Smalley and Harry Kroto, and named after Buckminster Fuller for his work on the geodesic dome, which it resembles. Furthermore, the buckyball is an insolator, but can be "doped" to make what is called a dopyball. Scientists crack open the ball with lasers, add other elements (potassium, rubidium, thallium, etc...), and reseal the ball. This is VERY similar to how silicon wafers are doped. These dopyballs are superconductors, but they don't follow most of the traditional rules (i.e., temperature and energy relations, etc). Perhaps superstrong, supercheap (you can make them at home...sort of) computer components can be made from them... think of the possibilities!

  • New type of Helium 3, I think not. (Score:4)

    by Shimbo ( 100005 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:31AM (#1184253)
    The sense of the original paper seemed to have got mangled. There is no such thing as 'a different sort of Helium 3'; Helium 3 has a nucleus made of two protons and one neutron, rather than the more usual two of each. That's it. You can't have a slightly different sort.

    Most helium around comes from fusing hydrogen in stars, and ends up as Helium 4. 'Stardust' as Joni Mitchell would have it. Helium 3 on the other hand, has been lurking around since the big bang. Like, 'cosmic', man.

  • Yahoo and Slashdot have the details wrong (Score:5)

    by pmc ( 40532 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:44AM (#1184254) Homepage
    See Nasa home page [nasa.gov] and NASA's version of the story [nasa.gov] for the details. Here [pnas.org] is the abstract of the article.

    Yahoo (and the Slashdot story) has it wrong in that the helium is extraterristial NOT necessarily from outside the solar system. He3 is in fact found in the solar wind: the crust of the moon, for example, is thought to enriched in He3 from the solar wind.

    He3 does exist on earth (and in the rest of the Solar System for that matter). What is different is the ratio of He4 to He3 on Earth and in most of the rest of the solar system. What the article should say is that

    1) Helium is trapped inside Bucky-balls found in asteriod impact sites and 2) The He4 to He3 ratio is the same as the ratio in the rest of the solar system and is not the same as that on earth.

    This implies that 1) Buckyballs formed in space 2) They can trap gases in them and 3) They can survive extremely violent impact.

    Slashdot - please, please, please check the original sources for stories.

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