When NASA’s Dawn mission reached Ceres in 2015, scientists and the public got their first detailed view of this intriguing and enigmatic dwarf planet.
The Largest Object in the Asteroid Belt
As the largest body in the Main Asteroid Belt, making up more than 39% of its total mass, Ceres is the only object in the region to have entered hydrostatic equilibrium — in other words, it became spherical under the pull of its own gravity.
Between 2015 and 2018, until the mission ran out of fuel, the data collected revealed surprising insights into this icy, mysterious world.
A Potential “Ocean World”
Similar to other moons in the Solar System — Europa (Jupiter), Titan and Enceladus (Saturn) — researchers began to consider Ceres a possible “ocean world,” with the potential for a liquid water interior and, therefore, conditions that might support life.
Although Dawn indicated that Ceres’ interior is too cold to sustain liquid water — with concentrated brines being the more likely scenario — new studies suggest that between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago, the dwarf planet may have provided an environment suitable for single-celled organisms.
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The research was led by Samuel W. Courville, a Planetary and Earth Scientist at Arizona State University (ASU), during his internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He collaborated with researchers from ASU, JPL, ASU’s School of Molecular Sciences, and the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Their findings were published on August 20th in Science Advances.
According to the data, the heat generated by radioactive decay in Ceres’ core was insufficient to maintain an internal ocean. Unlike Europa or Enceladus, Ceres does not benefit from tidal heating caused by the gravitational pull of nearby giant planets.
Evidence of Past Geological Activity
Still, evidence of salt deposits and organic molecules on its surface point to geological activity linked to subsurface water reservoirs in the past.
By creating thermal and chemical models of Ceres’ interior, scientists concluded that in its early history the dwarf planet likely had a stable supply of water heated by radioactive decay in its rocky, metallic core. This water may also have carried dissolved gases rising from interactions at the core-mantle boundary.
These results indicate that billions of years ago, Ceres possessed the key ingredients for life — and they broaden the possibility that other water-rich bodies in the Solar System may also have been habitable at some point in their history.
Read the original article on: Science Alert
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