The journal Planetary and Space Science is thin for July (vol. 261):
Cambianica, P. Munaretto, G. Cremonese, G. Pre-perihelion observations of the carbon-depleted comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinchan-ATLAS)- Insights into CN production and molecu… art. 106102 .2025.106102
I’ve said it before: cyanide and cyano-molecules are important tracers for the origin of life. Sure, cyanide is poisonous… to higher lifeforms. However, jumpstarting life requires reactive molecules, and CN fits the bill. Life (as far as we know it) needs both carbon and nitrogen. Yet nitrogen tends to form N2, a very stable and thus unavailable form. Nitrogen in the form of C-N, though, can be readily broken and re-formed. Thus, we question where those vital cyano-molecules were in the early Solar System.
On a more superficial level, HCN and other cyanos are volatile, and shed by comets. They then make important tracers for comet activity. Different volatiles have different condensation/sublimation temperatures; as a comet approaches the inner Solar System, we can watch different volatiles warm up and “eject” from the nucleus. And that’s what Cambianica et al. did, like other comet researchers. Tracking multiple volatiles- particularly ones that show up in our spectrographs- gives us a deeper understanding of comet activity, besides simply ‘more’ or ‘less active’.