Solid Buckeyballs Detected In Space 73
astroengine writes with an excerpt from an article at Discovery: "For the first time, 'buckyballs' have been discovered in the cosmos in a solid form. Until now, the only evidence in space for the bizarre little hollow balls of carbon atoms have been in interstellar gases, but with the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered buckyballs accumulating and stacking atop one another to form solid particles. 'These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate,' said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 'The particles we detected are minuscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs.'"
you know what these are (Score:5, Funny)
Proto- replicators. Watch them grow and take over the galaxy.
Re:you know what these are (Score:5, Funny)
They'd have to change their name. I, for one, could never welcome any overlord named Buckeyballs.
Re:Crystalline Entity!! (Score:5, Funny)
then you have a plausible mechanism for biogenesis.
Or at very least a Star Trek episode script.