The interstellar gas and the gas ejected into space by cool stars are now known to contain a rich collection of molecules. Most of these are organic compounds, some of which are familiar to the terrestrial chemist and can be found in a standard chemical stockroom, but many are entirely new molecules which have been detected and identified in space for the first time. Most of the nearly 100 polyatomic molecules so far detected in astronomical sources by radio telescopes are highly unsaturated carbon chains, a structure which is explosively unstable at even moderate density, and therefore difficult to study spec- troscopically on Earth.
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