Spitzer Telescope Finds Buckyballs... in Spaaace!

Looking at a planetary nebula 6,500 light years away, scientists recognized an old friend: the buckyball. The large, soccer ball-shaped molecule--made from bonding 60 carbon atoms together--was first seen in a lab in 1985. In a paper published today in Science, scientists confirm the first known extraterrestrial existence of the rare carbon balls.