Google doodles buckyball

Google today celebrates another anniversary, this time for the discovery of Buckminster-Fullerene molecules – aka, buckyballs – curious 3D lattices constructed from only carbon atoms.

And unusually, too, Google has rolled out an animated graphic as part of its new Google Doodle – allowing users to spin the buckyball using their mouse cursor.

The fullerene molecules caused a storm when they were announced in 1985 by researchers at Rice University.

Not only did they represent an entirely new form of carbon structure (in addition to graphite and diamond), fullernes also promised a whole range of new applications, not least based on their structural strength.

The first to be described was the C60 molecule, shaped like a football, and was named Buckminster Fullerene after the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, famous for his similar-shaped geodesic domes.

Since then, other variations of fullerene molecules have been discovered, among the most famous of which are carbon nanotubes, which not only offer structural strength, but also offer the potential for superconductivity.

While fullerenes have since been observed in nature, they remain rare, sometimes forming in minute amounts in soot.

Fullerene also remain enigmatic.

Offering great potential in a number of fields, both because the shape allows other atoms to be caged within a fullerene molecule, and also because the structure could offer exceptional material strength, they have yet to be developed into any wide-scale mainstream application because of the difficulty of producing them in large volumes in a controlled manner.

However, fullerenes remain a common topic in scientific research, in order to further explore their potential future applications.

No doubt one day fullerene molecules will form a range of exotic materials used in everyday life, but until that time, we simply have the new Google Doodle to remind us of their curisosity value.