Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC/Caltech)

NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope has detected buckyballs - intriguing, miniature-soccer-ball-shaped molecules - in interstellar space for the first time. With these new results, the buckyball claims the record for the largest molecule ever discovered floating between the stars. This artists conception shows buckyballs floating in interstellar space, near a region of current star-formation.