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Distant dwarf planet Makemake might have a surprising ice volcano

A small world in the outer solar system appears to have volcanic activity possibly spurred by liquid water

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

5 November 2024

On Makemake, a distant dwarf planet, a day lasts 22 hours

ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger

On a small dwarf planet called Makemake, astronomers have seen signs of surprising temperature changes. These could indicate that the tiny world, which is about 45 times further from the sun than Earth, has an active icy volcano.

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There may be a cosmic speed limit on how fast anything can grow

Csaba Kiss at Konkoly Observatory in Hungary and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study Makemake for less than an hour. They observed a spike in infrared…

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