One tragedy of the late Richard Smalley's life was that his beloved Buckytubes did not make more progress into the world of real products.

So I'm sure he's smiling from heaven at this news, word that Fujitsu has learned to use carbon nanotubes in a "heat sink" for mobile base station amplifiers.

Fujitsu has even learned to grow tubes on a wafer substrate, using iron as a catalyst. The problems of manufacturing Buckytubes in commercial quantities has long been daunting -- Smalley's own company, CNI, pioneered a process using carbon monoxide.

A Buckytube heat sink would solve two big problems for present-day mobile base stations. They need to dissipate a lot of heat to work effectively, but the best connection methods don't work for the high-frequency applications of mobile phone towers.

Fujitsu figures the technology is just three years from full commercial applications, which in BuckyTime isn't much time at all.