http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== */PLEASE NOTE:/* * */Information circulated on the cambridge-conference network is for/* */scholarly use only. The attached text may not be reproduced/* */or transmitted without prior permission of the copyright holder./* CCNet 98/2000 - 29 September 2000 (14) FULLERENES: SEARCHING FOR SMOKING GUNS & IMPACT SIGNALS From Bob Kobres > On the subject of what to look for to discern past impact events that may have left no conspicuous dents. If I had some monies to apply to this I'd be hunting for Bucky-Balls in Siberia! As far as I've been able to learn no one has probed this possibility. Mildly carbonated. bobk ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: http://www.sciencenews.org/20000325/fob1.asp [. . .] Fullerenes are hollow, spherical molecules made of pure carbon (SN: 6/27/98, p. 406). The most famous member of the family is buckminsterfullerene, consisting of 60 carbon atoms arranged in the pattern of a soccer ball. On Earth, fullerenes can be made in the lab and have been found in rocks seared by lightning strikes. Luann Becker of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and her group isolated fullerenes from the Allende and Murchison meteorites. Both are carbonaceous chondrites, a rare meteorite type that contains much organic material. The researchers found, trapped inside the fullerenes, noble gases whose isotopic profile did not match those of gases on Earth. The researchers also isolated fullerenes from a clay sediment layer deposited during an asteroid impact 65 million years ago. Some scientists believe that this collision, marking the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) boundary, led to the demise of the dinosaurs (SN: 3/1/97, p. S20). The sediment fullerenes also contain noble gases with unusual isotope ratios. [. . .] From: http://exosci.com/news/171.html A University of Hawaii researcher and her colleagues from NASA's Space Science Division have confirmed that a new form of carbon previously made in the laboratory also exists in nature. The finding indicates that the pure carbon molecules known as fullerenes could have been a factor in the early history of Earth and might even have played a role in the origin of life. The scientists' report will appear in the July 15 issue of the British journal Nature. Becker also will share their findings with fellow scientists during the triennial meeting of the International Society on the Origins of Life July 11-15 in San Diego, Calif. "It's not every day that you discover a new carbon molecule in nature; that's what makes this interesting," Becker says. "If it played a role in how the earth evolved, that would be important." Fullerenes are soccer-ball shaped molecules (hence their name, which honors geodesic-dome designer Buckminster Fuller) of 60 or more carbon atoms. Their discovery in 1985 as only the third form of pure carbon (along with diamonds and graphite) earned U.S. scientists Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley and British researcher Harold Kroto the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The trio accidentally synthesized these three-dimensional forms of carbon molecules in the laboratory while trying to simulate the high-temperature, high-pressure conditions in which stars form. Scientists hypothesized that fullerenes also exist naturally in the universe. Becker, who earlier discovered the presence of fullerenes in deposits at the site of the Sudbury impact crater in Ontario, Canada, and her colleagues were able to document naturally occurring fullerenes by exploiting a unique property characteristic of organic molecules. Unlike their pure-carbon cousins, which maintain a solid state, fullerenes can be extracted in an organic solvent. Becker crushed a piece of the Allende meteorite, demineralized the sample with acids, and used the organic solvent to extract fullerenes from the residue. The scientists found not only the C60 and C70 molecules believed to be most prevalent, but also significant quantities of C100 to C400 molecules. This is the first discovery of higher fullerenes in a natural sample. Because the multiple atoms in the molecule form a hollow, closed cage that can trap gasses inside, they may have delivered from their stellar birthplace both the carbon that is an essential element to life and the volatiles that contributed to the planetary atmospheres needed for the origin of life. At the very least, the molecules and their contents will tell scientists more about the early solar nebula or presolar dust existing when meteorites like Allende were formed. The research is supported by a grant from the NASA Cosmochemistry Program. From: http://vh50010.vh5.infi.net/menu/stories/43928.htm [. . .] Closer examination of a giant meteor impact crater near Sudbury, Ontario, has confirmed the possibility that some of Earth's chemistry, including the organic molecules that give us life, could have been imported from space. In a paper published in Science magazine last week, scientists said they found ancient helium atoms trapped inside soccer ball-like Carbon-60 molecules scattered around the 700-square-mile blast site. That helium turns out to be 5-billion years old and not of this Earth. Carbon-60, commonly known as the buckyball, was only recently discovered in the lab, but the researchers found it had been lying around the Sudbury crater for the 2-billion years since the collision. Because of its hollow, ball-like shape, Carbon-60 can harbor another element inside it, in this case helium. The ratio of rare helium-3 to helium-4 in the Sudbury samples points directly to outer space, said Robert Poreda, an associate professor of earth sciences at the University of Rochester who made the measurements. "The ratio of the helium inside the buckyballs is what we typically find in meteorites," Poreda said. "It's much higher than the ratio found anywhere on Earth, now or throughout Earth's history." [. . .] From: http://www.nanocentral.com/nanosci/materials/carbonchem/Aldersey_TRC60.html [. . .] It was five years before help came. In the meantime, Smalley's group trapped atoms inside successively smaller fullerenes. By showing that there was a point at which the fullerene burst open and released the trapped molecule they provided strong circumstantial evidence to support hollow sphere structure. Theoretical chemists made good use of these five years to do calculations that also confirmed the stability of this structure. Then in 1990, Wolfgang Krätschmer and Konstantinos Fostiropoulos at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and Donald Huffman and Lowell Lamb at the University of Arizona in Tucson succeeded in making buckminsterfullerene in visible quantities for the first time, not in an elaborate cat's cradle of lasers and cluster beams, but in a simple vacuum chamber with an electric arc between two carbon rods. By another unusual interdisciplinary twist of this tale, these people were physicists who, while investigating the light-scattering properties of carbon smoke, found themselves making in a test-tube the molecule that every chemist wanted. Where the graphite rods came into contact, an electric current of around 100 amps created a carbon vapor. Upon condensation on special surfaces or even on the walls of the vacuum chamber Krätschmer and Huffman found that under certain conditions the soot contained a small percentage of carbon-60. This could be purified by careful vaporization and recondensation or by dissolving the soot in a solvent and extracting the desired constituent. The beauty of the process was anybody could do it. [. . .] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Soot--it might be worth probing this stuff too: From: Natural Catastrophes During Bronze Age Civilisations (BAR International Series 728 1998), The Soil Record of an Exceptional Event at 4000 B.P. in the Middle East, by Marie-Agnes Courty. [page102] A common component of the dust layer for all the sites reported here consists of unusual angular, black, vesicular grains that are made predominantly of carbon (~50%) although they do not morphologically resemble either carbonised plant residues or fossil combustibles (Fig. 7d). They are finely fissured, dense and often contain phosphate inclusions. Their large vesicles are often filled by a Mg-Ca rich alumino-silicate glass similar to the type 1 glass described above [.a Ca-Mg rich alumino-silicate glass with variable proportions of Fe and the presence of uncommon inclusions such as pure nickel grains (Fig. 6j), zinc of copper, that can be geochemically defined as a pyroxene glass.] and a fine vesicular pure silica glass. [page107] Therefore, unambiguous evidence , such as shocked quartz, the presence of tektites, an iridium anomaly, or the occurrence of silicon carbide and diamond are generally preferred to recognise impact-induced ejecta layers. None of these fingerprints has so far been retrieved from the 4 kyr. B.P. dust layer. However, the occurrence of multi-site ignition together with black carbon production resulting from extensive biomass burning, also reported to be caused by asteroid impacts, provides indirect evidence to support an extra-terrestrial hypothesis. Various puzzling particles of the dust assemblage still require to be further elucidated, i.e. the carbon-rich black vesicular grains and the metal grains possibly linked to impact-induced lightning, and also the nature of the phenomenon responsible for the propagation of a surface shock wave and local explosion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More info: http://neon.mems.cmu.edu/bucky/other-refs.html http://gaus90.chem.yale.edu/window.html http://xbeams.chem.yale.edu/~cross/fullerene.html http://buntzen.sfu.ca/vpresearch/rm/percival.html Bob Kobres CCCMENU CCC for 2000