soreff comments on But Somebody Would Have Noticed - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Alicorn 04 May 2010 06:56PM

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Comment author: soreff 05 May 2010 05:21:26PM *  8 points [-]

Agreed - consider C60. Would anyone in 1980 have believed that there was an unrecognized allotrope of carbon, stable at room temperature and pressure? To phrase it another way: The whole field of organic chemistry had been active for about a century at that point, and had not noticed another structure for their core element in all that time.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 25 July 2010 09:13:48PM 3 points [-]

Would anyone in 1980 have believed that there was an unrecognized allotrope of carbon, stable at room temperature and pressure?

Yes, in 1966 and 1970.

Comment author: daedalus2u 25 July 2010 08:56:13PM 2 points [-]

I happen to work with someone who was working on his PhD thesis at MIT and found this gigantic peak in his mass spec where C-60 was, but didn't pursue it because he didn't have time.