Rice University News: In research detailed in the current issue of Science magazine, a team of Rice University chemists led by fullerene discoverer and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley describes the first observations of fluorescence in carbon nanotubes. Fluorescence occurs when a substance absorbs one wavelength of light and emits a different wavelength in response. The Rice experiments, conducted by Smalley’s group and the photophysics research team of chemist R. Bruce Weisman, found that nanotubes absorbed and gave off light in the near-infrared spectrum, which could prove useful in biomedical and nanoelectronics applications.