Today, however, humanity rejoices in possession of a fourth and historically unprecedented form of carbon. Researchers have created an entire class of these simon-pure carbon molecules, now collectively known as the "fullerenes." They were named in August 1985, in Houston, Texas, in honor of the American engineer, inventor, and delphically visionary philosopher, R. Buckminster Fuller.
"Buckminsterfullerene," or C60, is the best-known fullerene. It's very round, the roundest molecule known to science. Sporting what is technically known as "truncated icosahedral structure," C60 is the most symmetric molecule possible in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Each and every molecule of "Buckminsterfullerene" is a hollow, geodesic sphere of sixty carbon atoms, all identically linked in a spherical framework of twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons. This molecule looks exactly like a common soccerball, and was therefore nicknamed a "buckyball" by delighted chemists.
A free buckyball rotates merrily through space at one hundred million revolutions per second. It's just over one nanometer across. Buckminsterfullerene by the gross forms a solid crystal, is stable at room temperature, and is an attractive mustard-yellow color. A heap of crystallized buckyballs stack very much like pool balls, and are as soft as graphite. It's thought that buckyballs will make good lubricants -- something like molecular ball bearings.
When compressed, crystallized buckyballs squash and flatten readily, down to about seventy percent of their volume. They then refused to move any further and become extremely hard. Just *how* hard is not yet established, but according to chemical theory, compressed buckyballs may be considerably harder than diamond.