buckyballs

Ode to Buckyballs, on the day of their demise

Buckyballs, I hardly knew ye. The powerful little magnets came into my life only recently. Lured by a $5-per-set blowout sale, I loaded up with purple and orange Buckyballs and silver and gold Buckycubes.

When I opened my first box, I thought, "How tiny!" And then I began to play. Sure, they're supposed to be relaxing desk toys, but I found myself bent over the table, squinting and swearing, as I tried to form them back into the perfect square they came in.

When I finally achieved the box structure, I felt triumphant. Then I squished the shape into amorphous oblivion once again. This is the joy of Buckyballs. The power of creation. The power of destruction. The challenge of building beautiful, orderly forms from magnetic chaos.… Read more

Score! NASA spots soccer-ball shape buckyballs in space

Astronomers have discovered solid soccer-ball shaped molecules called buckyballs in space for the first time, providing a glimpse of the structure of matter and perhaps life in the cosmos.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory yesterday announced that the Spitzer Space Telescope was able to detect the buckyballs around a pair of stars 6,500 light-years from Earth. Named after the geodesic domes of architect Buckminster Fuller, buckministerfullerenes, or buckyballs, are sphere-shaped molecules with 60 carbon atoms. The unusual cage-like structure has made them candidates for storing hydrogen fuel or medical treatments on Earth.

Until now, astronomers have only found buckyballs in a gas form in space. Data from the telescope showed the microscopic molecules, each thinner than a strand of hair, to be stacked on top each other in a volume equivalent to 10,000 Mount Everests. … Read more

At Google, doodling is real work

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. Who are they? Google's Doodlers, of course.

A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.

This team's members mix artistic skills with an ability to fit into Google's culture--meaning they can speak engineering and hold their own … Read more

Can buckyballs store hydrogen?

Mention hydrogen and a legion of critics will outline the reasons why the gas will likely never be a major energy source.

But it doesn't mean that researchers still aren't working on these problems. And the latest idea comes from Rice University, where scientists have found that buckyballs-- molecular balls made up of 60 or more carbon atoms--can store hydrogen quite well.

The molecules can store around 8 percent of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, Rice found. The federal government, meanwhile, has set a goal of finding materials that can store 6 percent of its weight … Read more

Got allergies? Tiny discovery nothing to sneeze at

I don't have an image to show you of fullerenes (gotta love that name), but they are small. Too tiny for my digital camera. Each fullerene is a nanoparticle also known as "buckyball" and it contains about 60 carbon atoms. Those are arranged to form tiny hollow cages.

Now nanotechnologists at the Virginia Commonwealth University have used fullerenes to stop allergic reactions--not just treat allergy symptoms but prevent them and leave you with a clear head, which is more than you ever hoped for. The little carbon cages interrupt the basic process of the mast cells. … Read more