Scientists Just Found a Mysterious Tiny World With Atmosphere Beyond Pluto That Breaks Our Theories

Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, in the frozen darkness of our Solar System, scientists have just discovered something that shouldn’t exist… a tiny icy world with an atmosphere. This object, known as 2002 XV93, is only about 500 kilometers wide—far smaller than planets like Pluto—and yet, somehow, it’s holding onto a layer of gas around it. And that’s where the mystery begins, because according to everything astronomers believed, objects this small simply don’t have enough gravity to keep an atmosphere.

Source - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02846-1

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