Fullerenes and Fulleranes in Meteorites Revisited

Abstract

Fullerenes C-60 and C-70 and the fullerane C60H2 were not found in the toluene extract from 200 g of the C3V carbonaceous chondrite Allende by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Two distinct substances in the HPLC chromatogram of the extract, called A alpha and A beta, were found to have absorption spectra in the wavelength range 300-650 nm similar in shape to that of C-60. The HPLC chromatograms of A alpha and A beta show conclusively that A alpha and A beta are not C-60, C-70, C60O, or C60H2. The mass spectrometric analysis shows that Act and A beta do not contain any fullerene derivatives in the mass range 722 to 800. However, A beta may contain corannulene (C20H20), a suggested precursor in the formation of C-60 by condensation of carbon vapor. The discrepancy between the results of Becker et al. and Heymann remains essentially unresolved, but the probability of finding fullerenes or fulleranes in samples of the Allende, or other meteorites, has now become very small. The implications of the new results for theories of fullerene and fullerane formation in stellar and interstellar media are that these substances, if they formed in such environments, apparently were destroyed in the interstellar cloud from which the solar system formed, did not survive the formation of the solar system, or did not survive the formation of meteorites.