Tricarbon can be found in interstellar space and can be produced in the laboratory by a process called laser ablation.

Tricarbon is a small carbon cluster first spectroscopically observed in the early 20th century in the tail of a comet by William Huggins and subsequently identified in stellar atmospheres.

[1]: 218–220, plate 20 The chemical properties of C3 was investigated in the 1960s by Professor Emeritus Philip S. Skell of Pennsylvania State University, who showed that certain reactions of carbon vapor indicated its generation, such as the reaction with isobutylene to produce 1,1,1',1'-tetramethyl-bis-ethanoallene.

[2] The ground state molecular geometry of tricarbon has been identified as linear via its characteristic symmetric and antisymmetric stretching and bending vibrational modes and bears bond lengths of 129 to 130 picometer corresponding to those of alkenes.

In appropriate contexts, tricarbon can be viewed as propadiene with four hydrogen atoms removed, or as propane with eight hydrogen atoms removed; and as such, propadienediylidene or propanetetraylidene, respectively, may be used as a context-specific systematic names, according to substitutive nomenclature.