Because fullerene is a pure-carbon molecule, the Sudbury breccia offered a prime location for collecting promising samples, which we did in 1993. By exploiting the unique solubility properties of fullerene, I was able to isolate the most stable molecules—those built from 60 or 70 carbon atoms each—in the laboratory. The next critical questions were: Did the fullerenes hitch a ride to the earth on the impactor, surviving the catastrophic blast? Or were they somehow generated in the intense heat and pressures of the event?