Re:forget lighterfluid (Score 2)

It might be possible to trap molecules into a buckyball, but (as far as I know) no one has succeeded at that yet.

I think it is already possible to put atoms inside but i know of failed experiments to put CO (carbon monoxide) inside. Because of the stability of the buckyball you would need very high pressures of the molecules you want to push into the balls.

The other possibility is to catch the molecule while the buckyball is being formed, but conditions under which these things are being made are so bad (high temperatures and stuff) that normal molecules do not survive this. Atoms can of course survive, so this is probably the way in which the atom-buckyballs are made.

And for the ideas to put drugs inside to make effective drug-deliver-agents (mentioned in another reply), those big molecules will probably not fit inside the cage. Furthermore there has no research been done on the toxicity of fullerenes. They have six-rings which are very much like benzene (C6H6), which can cause cancer and other bad diseases. I don't know if i want to eat buckyballs, especially not when I'm sick already!

So the theoretical possibilities of buckyballs might be very big, but in practise the use is still very limited.