ysabetwordsmith | Buckyballs in Space (Reply)

I was intrigued by this article about buckyballs.

Space Buckyballs Thrive, Finds NASA Spitzer Telescope

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have discovered bucket loads of buckyballs
in space. They used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to find the little carbon
spheres throughout our Milky Way galaxy -- in the space between stars and
around three dying stars. What's more, Spitzer detected buckyballs around a
fourth dying star in a nearby galaxy in staggering quantities -- the
equivalent in mass to about 15 of our moons.

Buckyballs, also known as fullerenes, are soccer-ball-shaped molecules
consisting of 60 linked carbon atoms. They are named for their
resemblance
to the architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, an example of which
is
found at the entrance to Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fla. The
miniature spheres were first discovered in a lab on Earth 25 years ago,
but
it wasn't until this past July that Spitzer was able to provide the
first
confirmed proof of their existence in space (see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-243). At that time,
scientists weren't sure if they had been lucky to find a rare supply, or
if
perhaps the cosmic balls were all around.

"It turns out that buckyballs are much more common and abundant in the
universe than initially thought," said astronomer Letizia Stanghellini
of
the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "Spitzer had
recently found them in one specific location, but now we see them in
other
environments. This has implications for the chemistry of life. It's
possible
that buckyballs from outer space provided seeds for life on Earth."

Stanghellini is co-author of a new study appearing online Oct. 28 in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. Anibal Garc?a-Hern?ndez of the Instituto
de
Astrof?sica de Canarias, Spain, is the lead author of the paper. Another
Spitzer study about the discovery of buckyballs in space was also
recently
published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. It was led by Kris
Sellgren
of Ohio State University, Columbus.

The Garc?a-Hern?ndez team found the buckyballs around three dying
sun-like
stars, called planetary nebulae, in our own Milky Way galaxy. These
cloudy
objects, made up of material shed from the dying stars, are similar to
the
one where Spitzer found the first evidence for their existence.

The new research shows that all the planetary nebulae in which
buckyballs
have been detected are rich in hydrogen. This goes against what
researchers
thought for decades -- they had assumed that, as is the case with making
buckyballs in the lab, hydrogen could not be present. The hydrogen, they
theorized, would contaminate the carbon, causing it to form chains and
other
structures rather than the spheres, which contain no hydrogen at all.
"We
now know that fullerenes and hydrogen coexist in planetary nebulae, which
is
really important for telling us how they form in space," said
Garc?a-Hern?ndez.

Garc?a-Hern?ndez and his colleagues also located buckyballs in a
planetary
nebula within a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. This
was
particularly exciting to the researchers, because, in contrast to the
planetary nebulae in the Milky Way, the distance to this galaxy is
known.
Knowing the distance to the source of the buckyballs meant that the
astronomers could calculate their quantity -- two percent of Earth's
mass,
or the mass of 15 of our moons.

The other new study, from Sellgren and her team, demonstrates that
buckyballs are also present in the space between stars, but not too far
away
from young solar systems. The cosmic balls may have been formed in a
planetary nebula, or perhaps between stars. A feature story about this
research is online at
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1212-feature10-18
.

"It?s exciting to find buckyballs in between stars that are still
forming
their solar systems, just a comet?s throw away," Sellgren said. "This
could be
the link between fullerenes in space and fullerenes in meteorites."

The implications are far-reaching. Scientists have speculated in the
past
that buckyballs, which can act like cages for other molecules and atoms,
might have carried substances to Earth that kick-started life. Evidence
for
this theory comes from the fact that buckyballs have been found in
meteorites carrying extraterrestial gases.

"Buckyballs are sort of like diamonds with holes in the middle," said
Stanghellini. "They are incredibly stable molecules that are hard to
destroy, and they could carry other interesting molecules inside them.
We
hope to learn more about the important role they likely play in the
death
and birth of stars and planets, and maybe even life itself."

The little carbon balls are important in technology research too. They
have
potential applications in superconducting materials, optical devices,
medicines, water purification, armor and more.

Other authors of the Garc?a-Hern?ndez study are Arturo Manchado, the
Instituto
de Astrof?sica de Canarias; Pedro Garc?a-Lario, European Space Agency
Centre,
Spain; Eva Villaver, Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid, Spain; Richard
Shaw,
National Optical Astronomy Observatory; Ryszard Szczerba, Nicolaus
Copernicus Astronomical Center, Poland; and Jos? V. Perea-Calderon,
European
Space Astronomy Centre, Ingenier?a y Servicios Aerospaciales, Spain.

Other authors of the Sellgren study are Michael Werner, Spitzer project
scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; James
Ingalls, NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.; J.D.T. Smith, University of Toledo, Ohio; T.M.
Carleton, University of Arizona, Tucson; and Christine Joblin, Universit?
de
Toulouse, France.

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid
coolant
in May 2009 and began its warm mission. JPL manages the Spitzer mission
for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are
conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For
more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and
http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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