Astronomers have captured three-dimensional images of organic compounds streaming from two comets.
Comets contain some of the oldest materials in the Solar System. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, Martin Cordiner of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and his colleagues made detailed observations of chemicals flying off the comets Lemmon and ISON. Hydrogen cyanide flowed smoothly from the comets' nuclei, whereas hydrogen isocyanide formed clumps and jets. Both chemicals almost certainly formed within the comets, perhaps as a result of other large molecules breaking apart.
Such comet-formed compounds could have been important for kicking off the chemistry that led to life on Earth, the researchers say.
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Comets forge organic molecules. Nature 512, 234–235 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/512234d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/512234d
