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<\/p>\nJapanese astronomers on Monday said a tiny, little-known world beyond Pluto may possess an atmosphere, defying what had been thought possible for icy objects in our cosmic backyard.<\/p>\n
If confirmed, the roughly 500-kilometre-wide (310-mile) rock would become just the second world past Neptune in our Solar System to host an atmosphere, after only Pluto itself.<\/p>\n
Formerly classified as a planet, Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006, in part because astronomers were discovering other similar objects in a distant region called the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n
While NASA under U.S. President Donald Trump has floated the idea of restoring Pluto’s planet status, the discovery of another atmosphere nearby could undermine the argument for its reinstatement.<\/p>\n
For the new discovery, Japanese researchers and an amateur astronomer pointed their telescopes at an object with the unwieldy name of (612533) 2002 XV93.<\/p>\n
The icy world is nearly 40 times further from the Sun than Earth, or roughly six billion kilometers away.<\/p>\n
These dark objects can only be seen when they pass in front of a distant star.<\/p>\n
When this happened in January 2024, the astronomers observed that the starlight did not immediately reappear, suggesting a thin atmosphere was filtering some of the light.<\/p>\n
They estimate that the world has an atmosphere five to 10 million times thinner than Earth’s, according to a new study in Nature Astronomy.<\/p>\n
“This is important because, until now, Pluto was the only trans-Neptunian object with a confirmed atmosphere,” lead study author Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan told AFP.<\/p>\n
Such small worlds had not been thought capable of hosting an atmosphere.<\/p>\n
“This discovery therefore challenges the conventional view that small icy worlds in the outer Solar System are mostly inactive and unchanging,” he added.<\/p>\n
Ice volcanoes or comet smash?<\/p>\n
The researchers could not say for sure what created the atmosphere, which is nowhere near thick enough to support life.<\/p>\n
But they suggested it could have been made by gas being shot out from the world’s interior by erupting ice volcanoes.<\/p>\n
Or it could have been kicked up by a comet smashing into the world, which would mean it will gradually disappear.<\/p>\n
Jose-Luis Ortiz, a Spanish astronomer not involved in the research who studies dwarf planets beyond Neptune, said the results were interesting, but urged caution.<\/p>\n
“I still doubt that it is an atmosphere. We need more data,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
An alternative explanation for the observations could be that the object has a ring close to its body, Ortiz said.<\/p>\n
Ko Arimatsu acknowledged that he could not rule out “exotic alternatives” to an atmosphere.<\/p>\n
However, “a nearly edge-on ring does not seem consistent with the main features of our observations,” he added.<\/p>\n
Both astronomers called for further observations to reveal more about this strange world, particularly with the James Webb space telescope.<\/p>\n
There have also been suggestions that a dwarf planet called Makemake, which is slightly smaller than Pluto, could have a very thin atmosphere, though some scientists are sceptical.<\/p>\n
Last week, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman suggested the U.S. space agency was considering reinstating Pluto as a fully-fledged planet.<\/p>\n
Isaacman made the comments while endorsing a proposal to halve NASA’s science budget, riling some astronomers, Nature reported.<\/p>\n
“It’s wild to ‘make Pluto a planet again’ while decimating the careers of those of us that study it!” planetary scientist Adeene Denton wrote on Bluesky.<\/p>\n
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