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The discovery of cosmic fullerenes

Nature Astronomy volume 4, pages 299–305 (2020)Cite this article

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In 2010, the Spitzer Space Telescope detected evidence of a complex form of carbon that had never been seen in extraterrestrial environments. Jan Cami recounts the discovery of buckminsterfullerene in space.

My dad was my final year high school physics and chemistry teacher, and when I was a kid, he got a subscription to EOS, a popular science magazine that first appeared in 1983 and that could quench my thirst for science knowledge. Later on, it was in EOS that I would first read about and be intrigued by buckyballs (the colloquial name given to buckminsterfullerene), those weird carbonaceous particles shaped like a soccer ball. The article featured a picture of chemist Harry Kroto juggling with buckyball models, and a quote by his colleague Richard Smalley stating that these newly discovered molecules would turn out to be important in space. As part of the discovery of this species, they realized that they would be widespread and abundant in space1.

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    Paul Woods

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Woods, P. The discovery of cosmic fullerenes. Nat Astron 4, 299–305 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1076-5

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