Sixty carbon atoms arranged in a truncated icosahedron form a molecule of buckminsterfullerene. In other words, they make little itty bitty soccer balls, and the Spitzer space telescope has spotted these "buckyballs" floating around out in space. And not just one or two in gaseous form, but entire crates of them, stacked up together like oranges.

Buckyballs might look like hefty molecules, but even if you've got a bunch of them stacked together, it still doesn't amount to anything very large. Spitzer has identified solid bunches of C60, each of which is smaller than the diameter of a human hair, surrounding a pair of stars about 6,500 light years from Earth. These little bunches add up, though, and the total volume of buckyballs out there could fill the volume of Mt. Everest about 10,000 times over.

This is exciting because it suggests that there may be way more carbon floating around out there than we ever though. As I'm sure you know, carbon is important for making life as we know it possible, and buckminsterfullerene may be one of those critical life building block type-things. It's even possible that buckyballs from space helped to seed life on Earth.

Meanwhile, for those of us who already have life goin' on, buckyballs are good for all kinds of other things. They can store molecules inside them and keep them safe. They can be compressed into superdiamond body armor. They might even be able to fight HIV. And most importantly , if we ever need to play a very tiny soccer game, this is definitely the molecule to do it with.

NASA, via Discovery