After finding gaseous clouds of buckyballs in space last year,
astronomers have now discovered the carbon balls in a solid
form, around a pair of stars some 6,500 light-years from Earth.
Buckyballs are microscopic spheres, where 60 carbon atoms are
arranged -- with alternating patterns of hexagons and pentagons
-- into a football-like pattern. The unusual structure makes
them incredibly strong, and ideal candidates for things like
superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and
armour. "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 minuscule, 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 env