Comment by gus_massa
2 days ago
Two side remarks:
* It's probably too hot there (2000K in the cold part) for fullerene. The atmosphere there is mostly C2, C3 and CO. (CO is mentioned in the paper as a very good guess, but not mentioned in the press release.)
* If you fill a fullerene with H2 or He, it will float less instead of more.
I'm no chemist, but I was under the impression that high pressure might allow for the creations of fullerenes even at these kinds of temperatures.
I didn't think they would float (but I can see how "hanging out" could be read that way).
I have a chemistry specification in high school, anyway the conditions are weird. It's like inside a burning coal, but much hotter, 2000K instead of 700K. The density is 2g/ml so it's more like a liquid than a gas. It's far away from the usual conditions in a lab, so my knowledge/intuition are not very useful.
Anyway, at so high pressure and density, I expect molecules with big voids to be crushed.