Ja podré afegir més coses a la xerrada que durant l’Any Internacional de la Química feia sobre el carboni, tot parlant des dels futbal.lens fins al grafè. Sembla que el telescopi Spitzer ha trobat agregats de molècules de ful.lerè a l’espai, concretament als voltants d’un parell d’estrelles anomenades (en anglès) “XX Ophiuchi,” a 6,500 anys-llum de la terra. Segons l’article, podrien emplenar 10.000 muntanyes com l’Everest.. Segons PhysOrg.com, a Spitzer find solid buckyballs in space,

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.”

Però aquesta troballa del microscopi Spitzer, que treballa en l’infraroig (vibracions moleculars), ens recorda la presència de les molècules de futbal.lè a la Terra:

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.”

Quan surti l’article me’l miraré millor. Sempre és bo veure els avenços en ful.lerens. Aquí ja tenim un piló de pilotes de futbol moleculars. Com si fos un “Hat-Trick”!