Unexplained infrared emissions from inside and outside our galaxy may be linked to some of the largest molecules found in space.
Fullerenes, or buckyballs, are molecules shaped like hollow objects such as spheres, made up of 60 or more carbon atoms. They have been identified a handful of times in space, but more complicated forms containing metals, called fullerene-metal complexes, have yet to be found by astronomers.
These metal complexes are crucial for many carbon-based chemical reactions, including some that produce potential building blocks of life, but a lack of data on the wavelengths of light they emit 鈥� their so-called spectroscopic signatures 颅鈥� has made identifying them difficult.
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Now, at Xi鈥檃n Jiaotong University, China, and his colleagues have mapped out high-resolution infrared spectra of fullerene-metal complexes in the lab for the first time.
The spectroscopic signatures match previously unexplained infrared signals from space. As the spectra are closely related to their parent molecule, carbon-only fullerenes, it is difficult to separate out exactly the proportion of fullerenes and fullerene-metal complexes that make up the signals.
But this is the first clue that they exist at all, says Hou. 鈥淵ou can use this high-quality, high-resolution data to compare with astronomical data. Our laboratory data and simulations hint that fullerene-metal complexes very likely exist in space.鈥�
This type of laboratory information is essential for identifying the existence of these molecules in future, says at George Washington University in Washington, DC. But to properly differentiate these versions from plain carbon forms, we need lab data on their spectral signature in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, she says, as those signals would be more unique to metal complexes.
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