There are many possibilities for the future uses of these newly discovered forms of carbon. Nanotubes (a tube of carbon with half a buckyball on each end) show promise to be harder than carbon, but elastic, magnetic and metallic conductors. These buckytubes may make excellent building and engineering materials for use in bike frames, fishing rods and structural beams for example. A conference on nanotechnology in November 1998 revealed that scientists can now manipulate individual tubes, join them together and potentially coil them around a metal core to make a microscopic inductor for use in microchips.

The discovery of this form of carbon was purely accidental, and may go down in history as one of the most beneficial discoveries ever, with potential to revolutionise cancer treatment, power distribution, microchip technology and materials science.