Scientists at NASA for the first time have been able to observe the make up of Pluto and other small and icy celestial bodies in the outer solar system.
They had expected to find that the surfaces of the bodies, known as “trans-Neptunian” objects, were dominated by frozen molecules that are gases or liquids on the surface of Earth, like water, methane, and carbon dioxide. They believed that radiation from the sun and solar system would alter that chemistry, creating new and more complex hydrocarbon molecules like methanol and ethane.
