JWST Just Found a Buckyball… Inside a Buckyball?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Holy Space Bookie Balls. This is planetary nebula TC1. At its heart is a white dwarf, a dense smoldering core of a dying star. But if you look closer, see that upside down question mark carved into the gas? We don't know what caused it. But we do know what's inside.

[00:00:19]Bookie balls. These soccer ballshaped carbon cages are everywhere here. And thanks to JWST's MIR instrument, we just discovered something mind-blowing. These tiny molecules are actually arranged in the shape of one giant bookie ball. Hey space cats, I'm Dr. Maggie Lou and in this week's video, let's talk about space bookie balls.

[00:00:47]C60 full name bookman step ferine. It's a beautiful molecule made of 60 carbon atoms, each bonded to three neighbors.

[00:00:57]They arrange themselves into a mixture of hexagons and pentagons. 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons to be exact. And if that sounds familiar, it's because it's the exact geometry of a soccer ball. The name comes from architect Bookminster Fuller, who popularized the geodic domes that share the same structural map.

[00:01:18]These so-called bookie balls were first predicted in 1970 by Japanese professor A.G. Osawa, but they were not observed until lab experiments in 1985.

[00:01:30]British scientist Sir Harry Croto, one of the co-discoverers of the bookie ball, was actually trying to discover a completely different mystery. How long chain carbon molecules form in sootrich atmospheres of red giant stars. when he accidentally discovered C60.

[00:01:51]He and American researchers Richard Smelly and Robert Curl were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for their detection. The interstellar medium is a harsh environment bombarded by intense UV radiation. Most molecules are instantaneously ripped apart. However, the Bookie Ball's unique hollow cage-like shape is extremely stable, making it incredibly tough. They can survive extreme heat and crushing pressures that would shred other molecules apart. Croto was convinced that if these things were as tough as they seem and as easy to make in carbonrich smoke, then they had to be everywhere in the universe. He suspected that the intense heat of dying stars was the perfect factory for them. And it turns out that predicting they're in space is one thing, but actually proving it was a lot harder. It would take another 25 years. Now, every molecule in the universe has a unique fingerprint.

[00:02:56]It's a specific pattern of light it absorbs or emits known as its spectrum.

[00:03:01]But as far back as 1919, astronomers noticed something strange. dark gaps in the light from distant galaxies that didn't make any sense. These gaps didn't match hydrogen. They didn't match helium and they didn't match any small molecule that we knew of. We call them diffuse interstellar bands or DIIBs. For a century, these were the unidentified fingerprints of the universe. And as we discovered more of them, we realized that they weren't all coming from the same source. They had to be a whole load of different carriers. Determining the nature of the absorbing material, the carrier, is now a crucial problem in astrophysics.

[00:03:48]So the main problem was recreating the exact conditions of space in a laboratory to get that matching fingerprint to reproduce the absolute zero temperatures of space. Initially researchers tried embedding C60 in solid ices to get a reading. And in 1994 astronomers Bernard Foy and Pasquali Erin found two new diffuse interstellar bands. They matched these signatures of the icy bookie balls from the lab or they almost did. The wavelengths from the bookie balls in ice were slightly off from the ones that they saw in space. Foying and Aaron Fand argued that the shift was just due to a side effect of the molecules being trapped in ice versus actually floating around freely in a gas. But not everyone was convinced. They argued that in the precision world of spectroscopy, an almost match is just a no match. So without a way to measure the bookie balls floating freely in a vacuum, the gas phase, the scientific community was just split. So finally in 2015, John Mayer and his team at the University of Basil managed to trap Bookie Ball ions in a vacuum and cooled them down to almost absolute zero. They perfectly simulated the brutal void of space. And when they finally took the spectrum, the result was undeniable, a perfect match for the wavelengths that fo and frown had spotted back in 1994. By 2019, the evidence had become an avalanche.

[00:05:30]Multiple groups of astronomers and laboratory chemists were able to confirm the findings. After 100 years of searching for the source of these mysterious diffused interstellar bands, we can finally say for sure the soccer balls of the 1985 lab experiment were officially one of the carriers of diffuse interstellar bands. Not all of the carriers, but at least one of them.

[00:05:54]And that brings us to today and the incredible images from the James Web Space Telescope. TC1 is the perfect place to find these molecular soccer balls. It's a planetary nebula about 10,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Ara. Contrary to their name, planetary nebulas don't have much to do with planets. But early astronomers just thought that their rounded shapes looked a bit like Uranus or Neptune through tiny telescopes, so called them planetary nebulas. but rather these are regions of cosmic gas and dust that have exploded off the outer layers of their dying star. At its center is a white dwarf, the scorching hot collapsed core of a dying star. This star has already spent millions of years fusing helium into carbon. And as it does, it puffs out its outer layers, creating an environment that is rich in carbon, but strikingly low in oxygen.

[00:07:03]Now, this low oxygen part is critical.

[00:07:06]If there were plenty of oxygen around, the carbon would just bond with it to make carbon monoxide. But in the lonely oxygen starved shells of TC-1, the carbon atoms have no choice but to find each other. Under the intense UV radiation blasting from the white dwarf, these carbon atoms are cooked and pushed into the most stable shape possible, the bookie ball. It's a perfect storm of chemistry. The right ingredients, the right heat, zero distractions. So for years, we've known TC1 was special. In fact, Spitzer Space Telescope was the first to detect the signature of Bookie Balls here in 2010.

[00:07:50]But Spitzer's view was a little bit blurry. Now we have JWST.

[00:07:56]Thanks to the impressive resolution of the MIR instrument, we can now actually see how these molecules are distributed in space. And that's how scientists found the meta surprise. These billions of tiny nanometer sized bookie balls aren't just floating randomly in space in this planetary nebula. They are organized into a massive hollow structure that mimics the shape of a giant bookie ball. It's light years across. What's truly amazing is that we caught this at the perfect time. These molecules are currently at roughly room temperature, which is the Goldilock zone for emitting the exact infrared light that JWST and Spitzer can actually detect. We now estimate that up to 1.5% of all carbon in space is locked up within these tiny soccer ball like molecules. But this won't last forever.

[00:08:53]As the nebula expands and the white dwarf cools down, these bookie balls will eventually become too cold to glow.

[00:09:01]A century from now, these magnificent structures might be invisible to us.

[00:09:06]Spitzer and web just happen to look exactly at the right place at exactly the right time. So why does any of this matter though? Is it just about finding these cool shapes and clouds? Well, no, not exactly. Bookie balls are some of the largest, most complex molecules in space, and they are incredibly tough.

[00:09:26]Their unique hollow structure allows for something called endoedral encapsulation. And this is where they act as a molecular cage, trapping other atoms or molecules inside. This has massive implications here on Earth. In medicine, we're researching how to use these cages to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells. In tech, they're being used to create ultra small transistors, organic solar cells, and even superconductors conducting electricity with zero resistance when mixed with metals like potassium. But the most poetic theory is that bookie balls may be the reason we're even here at all to study them. Scientists have long wondered about how the building blocks of life got to Earth. We know that at one time our planet was this molten chaotic mess in the early days. But because C60 is so resilient, they can survive the brutal journey through interstellar space and the violent impact of a meteorite hitting the young Earth.

[00:10:36]These cages potentially could have shielded complex carbon and other essential elements from harsh radiation, bringing the building blocks of life to our doorstep billions of years ago. We are quite literally looking at the history of our own atoms. Anyway, that is all I have time for this week. Thank you to my YouTube members supporting this video. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to leave [music] me a like, share, and subscribe.

[00:11:06]Hey cats, fly [music] with me to the stars.

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