Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Bright star \(\nu\) Indi shows elevated levels of alpha-process elements, suggesting great age, and is kinematically heated, probably from the merger of a dwarf galaxy with the Milky Way. Chaplin et al. make a case for \(\nu\) Indi being an accurate indicator of the timing for the Gaia–Enceladus merger.
The early Solar System might have been similar to the ringed protoplanetary disks observed by ALMA. One of the gaps, at Jupiter’s position, could be the cause of the observed dichotomy between carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous material.
A refined analysis of infrared observations of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from the VIRTIS instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft has revealed the presence of aliphatic organic molecules on the comet nucleus.
Spectroscopic simulations of exoplanetary atmospheres show that our best chance to detect molecular oxygen lies in the 6.4-μm band of collision-induced absorptions. The first detections could be possible with the James Webb Space Telescope.