I am more surprised it contains fullerenic particles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene or familiarly buckyballs) as well.

It actually makes sense that the carbon atoms would recombine to form every form of carbon in the high temperature of the flame before pairing off with an oxygen atom or two and flying off as CO or CO2.

This is not something I would have expected, but it makes sense. All possible reactions between reactants occur, but the kinetic or thermodynamic products are the significant ones we look for and isolate.

This is astoundingly bad scientific writing. I'm actually in awe.

Yes, it is a poor {A}I's best guess as to what the paper said. The actual paper can be found here:

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/CC/c0cc05...

If you're at a university that can get past the paywall you can read it for free otherwise they want 32 euros for it.

The experimental setup seemed susceptible to aliasing (which is to say detecting one type of carbon when another was present) and the inability to extract the material measured makes cross checking the sensor difficult.

Everyone is so quick to criticise. It's a rip-off from the University press release which can be found here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2011/Title,72748,en...

This article has distinct smell of automatic or computer-assisted translation all over it.

Or even just plain human translation, which was my first thought. It also sounds a little promotional.

That's physorg for you, at least this article is based on something (I hope!) true.

"A million fucking diamonds Michael!" -Lindsay Bluth Fünke

Now the question is, how can De Beers extend their extorted monopoly to all flame?

They're probably working on a candle diamond detector right now.