Eris, the vast and second-largest dwarf planet, was discovered on January 5, 2005, during a Palomar Observatory survey by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz. Recent research intrigued scientists about understanding the atmosphere of Eris and comparing it with Pluto. Francis Nimmo, the lead author of the study and a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz, published in the journal Science Advances per Reuters.com: “We already knew that Eris is more rock-rich than Pluto, but what we didn’t know was whether Eris had separated the rock from the ice.” Nimmo furth…