Buckyballs may be the unknown substance in interstellar gas

NPR : In 1922 Mary Lea Heger (later Mary Lea Shane) discovered that something was absorbing specific frequencies of light from distant stars. Since then, no one has been able to determine what that interstellar material was. Harry Kroto of Florida State University, one of the discoverers in 1985 of the spherical arrangements of carbon atoms called buckyballs, suggested soon after the discovery that the molecules could be the mystery substance. John Maier of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and his colleagues first tested the possibility in a laboratory experiment 20 years ago; although their results were positive, they weren’t strong enough to be convincing. Now Maier’s team has advanced their experimental setup to more accurately reproduce the physical conditions of interstellar space. And the results are much more convincing. The introduction of buckyballs into the space-like system resulted in absorption spectra that closely matched those of distant stars.