A team of researchers have stumbled on a scientific first: golden buckyballs. These nanoparticles of gold atoms are roughly 6 angstroms across — about 6 millionths the diameter of a human hair. Snip:
Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and at the University of Nebraska report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have discovered hollow molecular structures made of pure gold — golden buckyballs.
Carbon buckyballs, hollow spheres made of 60 carbon atoms and named for the geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, were discovered in the early 1980s. Originally known as buckminsterfullerenes (today, technically, just as fullerenes), buckyballs became the third known natural form of pure carbon after diamond and graphite.
In today's report, Lai-Sheng Wang, a national lab scientist and professor of physics at Washington State University, said his team appears to have created the first metallic version of the buckyball.
Link to Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. (Thanks, Vance!)
