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NASA revs up the coverage as buckyballs are discovered in significant quantities in space.
Newsworthy science has catchy names!
PASADENA, Calif. – “A soccer ball-shaped carbon molecule that some scientists think may have helped seed life on Earth is more common in the universe than initially believed.”
Fantastic! Amazing! err….wth is a buckyball? Wikipedia helps a little:
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of stacked graphene sheets of linked hexagonal rings; but they may also contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings.[1]
Where in space?
“Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers spotted the carbon spheres known as buckyballs around three dying sun-like stars in the Milky Way and in the space between stars. The telescope also detected the cosmic balls floating around a dying star in a nearby galaxy.”
We are set, at least as Sciency type news is concerned, especially if it has a cool name.
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