IT’S the tiniest drop of water possible. The isolation of a single water molecule inside a carbon cage could allow the life-giving stuff to be studied in a new way.

Kei Kurotobi and Yasujiro Murata of Kyoto University in Japan made a pore in a carbon buckyball. Oxygen atoms ringing the pore bonded to one water molecule, which then entered the spherical cage under high temperature and pressure (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1206376).

Researchers can now study how water behaves when stripped of the hydrogen bonds that normally govern its properties, as well as the molecule’s two different “spin” states, which cannot be separated when water molecules are en masse.