Cyanide shows up in apple seeds, toxicology reports and now a planetary nursery encircling a young star. Cyanide compounds found in a planet-forming disk suggest that the rich brew of organic compounds in asteroids and comets around our sun might be common in other solar systems as well.
A vapor of hydrogen cyanide, methyl cyanide and cyanoacetylene swirls around the star MWC 480, about 460 light-years away in the constellation Auriga. The molecules, possible precursors to substances essential for life, appear in abundances similar to those found in local comets, report Karin Öberg, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues in the April 9 Nature.