NASA's Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-0321
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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News release: 2012-047 Feb. 22, 2012

NASA's Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-047&cid=release_2012-047

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for
the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the
microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos.

Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late
architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules
arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal
candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting
materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

In the latest discovery, scientists using Spitzer detected tiny specks of matter, or particles,
consisting of stacked buckyballs. They found the particles around a pair of stars called "XX
Ophiuchi," 6,500 light-years from Earth, and detected enough to fill the equivalent in volume to
10,000 Mount Everests.

"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."

Buckyballs were detected definitively in space for the first time by Spitzer in 2010. Spitzer later
identified the molecules in a host of different cosmic environments. It even found them in
staggering quantities, the equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons, in a nearby galaxy called the
Small Magellanic Cloud.

In all of those cases, the molecules were in the form of gas. The recent discovery of buckyballs
particles means that large quantities of these molecules must be present in some stellar
environments in order to link up and form solid particles. The research team was able to identify
the solid form of buckyballs in the Spitzer data because they emit light in a unique way that
differs from the gaseous form.

"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."

Buckyballs have been found on Earth in various forms. They form as a gas from burning candles
and exist as solids in certain types of rock, such as the mineral shungite found in Russia, and
fulgurite, a glassy rock from Colorado that forms when lightning strikes the ground. In a test
tube, the solids take on the form of dark, brown "goo."

"The window Spitzer provides into the infrared universe has revealed beautiful structure on a
cosmic scale," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"In yet another surprise discovery from the mission, we're lucky enough to see elegant structure
at one of the smallest scales, teaching us about the internal architecture of existence."

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For information about previous Spitzer discoveries of buckyballs, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20100722.html
and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20101027.html .

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and
http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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