<p>The roughly spherical molecules consist of a "third type of carbon", after graphite and diamond, which occur widely on earth. <br /><br />Buckyballs, on the other hand, have only been created in labs and have never before been proven to exist elsewhere, reports The Telegraph. <br /><br />The BBC reported that a research group used an infrared telescope owned by Nasa to spot the buckyballs in "a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star". <br />They were looking for something else when they spotted the infrared signature of large objects that turned out to be buckyballs. <br /><br />The signature came from a star in the southern hemisphere constellation of Ara, 6,500 light-years away. <br /><br />The researchers, who were led by Jan Cami from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, published their findings in the journal Science. <br /><br />Buckyballs are molecules made of 60 carbon atoms joined together in a sphere. <br />Their name is a nod to Richard Buckminster Fuller who, among other things, created architectural designs for geodesic domes, such as can be seen at Cornwall's Eden Project. <br />Sir Harry Kroto, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of buckyballs, told the BBC: "All the carbon in your body came from star dust, so at one time some of that carbon may have been in the form of buckyballs." <br /></p>
<p>The roughly spherical molecules consist of a "third type of carbon", after graphite and diamond, which occur widely on earth. <br /><br />Buckyballs, on the other hand, have only been created in labs and have never before been proven to exist elsewhere, reports The Telegraph. <br /><br />The BBC reported that a research group used an infrared telescope owned by Nasa to spot the buckyballs in "a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star". <br />They were looking for something else when they spotted the infrared signature of large objects that turned out to be buckyballs. <br /><br />The signature came from a star in the southern hemisphere constellation of Ara, 6,500 light-years away. <br /><br />The researchers, who were led by Jan Cami from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, published their findings in the journal Science. <br /><br />Buckyballs are molecules made of 60 carbon atoms joined together in a sphere. <br />Their name is a nod to Richard Buckminster Fuller who, among other things, created architectural designs for geodesic domes, such as can be seen at Cornwall's Eden Project. <br />Sir Harry Kroto, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of buckyballs, told the BBC: "All the carbon in your body came from star dust, so at one time some of that carbon may have been in the form of buckyballs." <br /></p>