![Artistic composition of the fullerenes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons found in a R Corona Borealis star rich in hydrogen. The non-detection of these molecules in the vast majority of very hydrogen-poor R Coronae Borealis stars contradicts the terres Artistic composition of the fullerenes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons found in a R Corona Borealis star rich in hydrogen. The non-detection of these molecules in the vast majority of very hydrogen-poor R Coronae Borealis stars contradicts the terres](/sites/default/files/styles/crop_square_2_2_to_320px/public/images/news/resultados70_74.jpg?itok=LOvabwXR)
The largest known molecules in space, fullerenes, do not occur in hydrogen-poor environments as previously thought. Fullerenes are very stable molecules and difficult to destroy, they have a structure very similiar to that of a soccer ball and made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in three-dimensional spherical structures and patterns of alternative hexagons and pentagons. These molecules were synthesized in the laboratory by chemists Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley, who thus received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Kroto and Smalley, according to the laboratory experiments, believed that
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