Toxic Compound In Space Signals Starbirth

Centuries ago it was commonly believed that comets carried disease in their tails. Nowadays we know the only disease you can get from a comet is a cold — if you stay out too long at night watching it! But these old beliefs were not completely wrong: comet tails do contain an extremely poisonous chemical compound — hydrogen cyanide. Now a team of Dutch and German astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Infrared Space Observatory and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Hawaii have discovered that this poison can help them to understand the birth of massive stars. Its presence is a sign that a massive baby star has begun to warm up