Message #27846

[Qoais]

Well Sungate, I like to learn all kinds of things, but I'm no expert

As to the cost, I thought graphite was one of the cheapest substances on earth.  But of course, once it's needed for such a specialized purpose, the cost goes thru the roof.  Then you get contractors like the cement companies that give a quote and then use inferior product to increase the profit margin.  And the wheel goes round and round.........

On the other hand, we may have a small problem here:

[edit] Safety issues
See also: Nanotoxicology
Although C60 has been thought in theory to be relatively inert, a presentation given to the American Chemical Society in March 2004 and described in an article in New Scientist on April 3, 2004, suggests the molecule is injurious to organisms. An experiment by Eva Oberdörster at Southern Methodist University, which introduced fullerenes into water at concentrations of 0.5 parts per million, found that largemouth bass suffered a 17-fold increase in cellular damage in the brain tissue after 48 hours. The damage was of the type lipid peroxidation, which is known to impair the functioning of cell membranes. There were also inflammatory changes in the liver and activation of genes related to the making of repair enzymes. These results have been published in "Environmental Health Perspectives" in July 2004.

Pristine C60 can be suspended in water at low concentrations as large clusters often termed nC60. These clusters are spherical clumps of C60 between 250-350 nm in diameter. Thus, nC60 represents a different chemical entity than solutions of C60 in which the fullerenes exist as individual molecules. Recently, results presented at the ACS meeting in Anaheim, CA suggest that nC60 is moderately toxic to water fleas and juvenile largemouth bass at concentrations in water of around 800 ppb. The first study of its kind on marine life, these preliminary results quickly spread across the scientific community. However, the overwhelming evidence of the essential non-toxicity of C60 (not nC60) in previously peer-reviewed articles of C60 and many of its derivatives indicates that these compounds are likely to have little (if any) toxicity, especially at the very low concentration at which it is≈ used (~1-10 µM). [citation needed]

A study published in December 2005 in Biophysical Journal raises a red flag regarding the safety of C60 when dissolved in water. It reports the results of a detailed computer simulation that finds C60 binds to the spirals in DNA molecules in an aqueous environment, causing the DNA to deform, potentially interfering with its biological functions and possibly causing long-term negative side effects in people and other living organisms

Maybe that is why Iapetus is a "dead" star.  Altho I doubt the "star" was submerged in water, but there could be other considerations.