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Makemake's Secret Finally Revealed


As someone who has lectured for more years than I care to remember and written books about space, I've grown accustomed to constantly rewriting sections as new discoveries emerge. The discovery of the dwarf planet Makemake led to such rewrites, but until now we didn't know much about this elusive world. A team of scientists at the Southwest Research Institute has recently changed that with their detection of methane gas on Makemake using the James Webb Space Telescope. It's exactly the kind of discovery that sends authors like me back to the drawing board, because this finding doesn't just add another detail to Makemake's story, it fundamentally changes how we view these distant worlds.

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