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Makemake is a dwarf planet orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. It has a diameter 60% that of Pluto, and is the fourth-largest trans-Neptunian object and the largest member of the Solar System's classical Kuiper belt, a disk of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. Its discovery on March 31, 2005, by American astronomers Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz at Palomar Observatory contributed to the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. Makemake's surface, like Pluto's, is largely covered by frozen methane and stained reddish-brown by tholins. It has one known satellite, unnamed, whose orbit suggests that Makemake's rotation has a high axial tilt. Makemake shows evidence of geochemical activity and cryovolcanism, which has led scientists to suspect that it might harbor a subsurface ocean of liquid water. No high-resolution images of its surface exist because it has not been visited up close by a space probe. (This article is part of a featured topic: Solar System.)
Did you know...
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In the news
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- In basketball, the New York Knicks defeat the San Antonio Spurs to win the NBA Finals (MVP Jalen Brunson pictured).
- Elon Musk becomes the world's first US-dollar trillionaire after his company SpaceX raises the largest initial public offering.
- English artist David Hockney dies at the age of 88.
- In athletics, Ja'Kobe Tharp sets a new world record in men's 110 metres hurdles.
Selected anniversaries
- 1520 – Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, censuring 41 propositions from Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and subsequent writings, and threatening him with excommunication unless he recanted.
- 1896 – A magnitude-8.5 earthquake and a subsequent tsunami struck Japan, killing at least 22,000 people and destroying about 9,000 homes.
- 1920 – Three African-American circus workers were lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota, a crime that shocked the country for having taken place in the Northern United States.
- 1991 – An eruption of Mount Pinatubo (pictured) in the Philippines deposited large amounts of particulate matter into the atmosphere, enough to lower global temperatures by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F).
- 2006 – US president George W. Bush designated 140,000 square miles (360,000 km2) around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, now one of the world's largest protected areas.
- Eadburh of Winchester (d. 960)
- Mehmed Rashid Pasha (d. 1876)
- John B. Fenn (b. 1917)
- Mohamed Muizzu (b. 1978)
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