James Webb finds buckyballs in Tc 1 planetary nebula
The James Webb Space Telescope just found something pretty wild, carbon molecules known as buckyballs, in a distant planetary nebula called Tc 1, about 10,000 light-years away.
This nebula is basically the leftovers from a star like our Sun, now centered around a hot white dwarf.
The discovery hints that there's more going on in these cosmic clouds than scientists expected.
Unexpected shell of buckyballs surrounds star
Buckyballs are soccer ball-shaped molecules made of 60 carbon atoms, and in Tc 1 they're arranged in a shell around the star, something current science didn't see coming.
Plus, the nebula itself has an odd upside-down question mark shape and gives off light patterns that don't quite match up with predictions.
All this suggests local conditions might play a bigger role than we thought in how space molecules come together.