Solid Carbon Fullerene Buckyballs found in Space by NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

Formally known as buckminsterfullerene, what scientists refer to as Buckyballs has for the first time ever been found in a solid, rather than a gaseos form. The discovery of the solid carbon spheres was made through a review of data supplied by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Buckyballs, which got their name because of their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, consist of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, much like a soccer ball. The spheres of carbon are ideal for electrical and chemical applications on Earth because of this structure. The applications include superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor, according to a NASA press release.

The data analyzed from the Spitzer Telescope shows tiny particles made up of stacked buckyballs. The particles were seen by Spitzer around a pair of stars known as “XX Ophiuchi,” which is about 6,500 light-years from Earth.

“These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate,” said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The particles we detected are miniscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs.”

While Buckyballs have been detected in space previously, including in quantities equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons in the Small Magellanic Cloud, this is the first time they have been found in solid form. These finding suggest that large amounts of buckminsterfullerene must exits in some stellar environments in order to link up and form solid particles.

“This exciting result suggests that buckyballs are even more widespread in space than the earlier Spitzer results showed,” said Mike Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “They may be an important form of carbon, an essential building block for life, throughout the cosmos.”

For more information about Spitzer discoveries of buckyballs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/