A CO2 Discovery on One of Pluto’s Moons Could Be Huge In Understanding the Former Planet

Amaze Lab

Pluto is no longer classified as a planet, it’s a dwarf planet, however, it still has five moons. Now astronomers say they have detected CO2 and other compounds on one of its moons for the first time ever.

Transcript

00:00Pluto is no longer classified as a planet it's a dwarf planet only 1477 miles in diameter however

00:11it still has five moons and one of them Charon is 754 miles across this has caused both the moon

00:17and the dwarf planet to enter into a binary orbit or where rather than the moon being the lone

00:22orbiter they sort of orbit each other around a single point in space in fact it is this very

00:27reason that Pluto is no longer classified as a planet and things just got weirder for Charon as

00:32well as astronomers say they have just detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide there for

00:37the first time experts say that in the far reaches of the solar system beyond Neptune most objects are

00:42composed of nitrogen and methane ice the co2 and Charon is believed to have come from deep within

00:47it and the detection was only possible from asteroids slamming into the moon and exposing it

00:52still astronomers continue to be baffled as to how the moon formed in the first place

00:56experts have theorized that it came into existence the same way our moon did from a large object

01:01slamming into it with the material that was jettisoned away eventually coalescing into an orbiting body

01:06still questions remain about our solar system's furthest mysterious orbiters

01:12you

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