Methane gas may signal an atmosphere or geological activity on a distant dwarf planet located at the outer edge of the Solar System.
A research team led by the Southwest Research Institute has detected gas on the distant dwarf planet Makemake using NASAS James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). With this finding,Makemake becomes only the second trans-Neptunian object,after Pluto,where gas has been confirmed. The gas was identified as methane.
“Makemake is one of the largest and brightest icy worlds beyond Neptune, and its surface is dominated by frozen methane,” said SwRI’s Dr.Silvia Protopapa, lead author of a new paper recently published in *The Astrophysical Journal Letters*. “The webb telescope has now revealed that methane is also present in the gas phase above the surface, a finding that makes Makemake even more captivating. It shows that makemake is not an inactive remnant of the outer Solar System, but a dynamic body where methane ice is still evolving.”
Surface anomalies and thermal clues
The methane signal was identified as solar-excited fluorescence, meaning sunlight absorbed by methane molecules is re-emitted as spectral emission. Protopapa and her co-authors note that this could reflect the presence of a thin atmosphere in balance with surface ices – as seen on Pluto – or short-lived processes such as comet-like sublimation or cryovolcanic plumes. Both explanations remain possible and are consistent with the current data, though limitations in spectral resolution and background noise p