"Bruce Sterling - Buckymania" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling

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From THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, July 1992

F&SF Box 56 Cornwall CT 06753 $26/yr; outside USA $31/yr

F&SF Column #2



BUCKYMANIA



Carbon, like every other element on this planet, came to us from
outer space. Carbon and its compounds are well-known in galactic
gas-clouds, and in the atmosphere and core of stars, which burn
helium to produce carbon. Carbon is the sixth element in the periodic
table, and forms about two-tenths of one percent of Earth's crust.
Earth's biosphere (most everything that grows, moves, breathes,
photosynthesizes, or reads F&SF) is constructed mostly of
waterlogged carbon, with a little nitrogen, phosphorus and such for
leavening.

There are over a million known and catalogued compounds of
carbon: the study of these compounds, and their profuse and intricate
behavior, forms the major field of science known as organic
chemistry.

Since prehistory, "pure" carbon has been known to humankind
in three basic flavors. First, there's smut (lampblack or "amorphous
carbon"). Then there's graphite: soft, grayish-black, shiny stuff --
(pencil "lead" and lubricant). And third is that surpassing anomaly,
"diamond," which comes in extremely hard translucent crystals.

Smut is carbon atoms that are poorly linked. Graphite is carbon
atoms neatly linked in flat sheets. Diamond is carbon linked in strong,
regular, three-dimensional lattices: tetrahedra, that form ultrasolid
little carbon pyramids.

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