[extropy-chat] Interstellar Dust (was: polyhedra)

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, scerir wrote:

> But the "platonic solids" are neither Platonic nor Pythagorean.
> They were known to the inhabitants of North East Scotland in the
> late ***neolithic*** period. This is astonishingly little known.
> The Ashmolean Museum has the 5 figures on display! You can see
> the amazing picture in this beautiful paper by M.Atiyah and
> P.Sutcliffe (I'm indebted to John McKay for that).
> http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0303071 (--> the pdf)

Quite interesting (if only for the pictures)...

But the most interesting thing that caught my eye answers a question
that I think may have come up on the list before though I'm not
sure whether or not we answered it (perhaps I might have missed it).

"... Other Fullerenes are also common, particularly C_70, C_76 and C_84,
and have been found to exist in interstellar dust as well as in geological
formations on Earth. ..."

So yes folks there are Fullerenes in space (too bad the references aren't
cited).  Next question is are there Fullerenes with caged atoms or molecules
inside???  Now those would be really interesting.

Robert