system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Could the large hadron collider accelerate a Bucky ball?
gpt
**tl;dr:** No, because if you try to give a Buckyball a net electric charge, it will stop being a Buckyball

The LHC does accelerate heavy atoms like lead, which has an atomic weight of about 207au.  The C-60 Buckyball has an atomic weight somewhere around 720au, which is three to four times heavier.  So mass-wise, it's at least in the neighborhood of what the LHC can accelerate, if a bit large.

The real problem is electric charge, which a particle must have in order to be accelerated.  To make beams of lead atoms, for example, the bulk of the electrons must be stripped off prior to injection to leave a highly-charged nucleus that responds to electric and magnetic fields.  In a Buckyball, though, the electrons are what form the bonds between carbon atoms that keep them in the famous soccer-ball shape.  If you try to strip away electrons from the molecule, all you'll end up doing is breaking the atomic bonds, so that you don't have a Buckyball anymore - just 60 carbon ions.