Did the subsurface ocean on dwarf planet ceres once fuel potential habitability? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the possibility for Ceres having once been hospitable for microbial life. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the past conditions for finding life on Ceres and how this can be used to expand the search for life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate the inerior evolution of Ceres, including its composition and temperature. This study builds upon data obtained from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which explored Ceres from April 2015 to October 2018, revealing a rocky interior surrounded by an ice shell approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) thick. In the end, the models identified that Ceres’ interior temperature could have had habitable conditions between approximately 500 million and 2 billion years after the formation of Ceres.
“On Earth, when hot water from deep underground mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for microbes — a feast of chemical energy. So, it could have big implications if we could determine whether Ceres’ ocean had an influx of hydrothermal fluid in the past,” said Dr. Sam Courville, who is a postdoctoral research scholar at Arizona State University and lead author of the study.
The dwarf planet Ceres is the largest planetary body in the main asteroid belt and is known for its spherical shape and large bright surface spots that scientists have confirmed to be brine (extra salty) deposits. These brines are hypothesized to have originated from Ceres’ interior in a process called cryovolcanism when Ceres was much warmer long ago.
What new discoveries about Ceres’ ancient past will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Science Advances, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: Enhanced-color image of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft displaying onoe of its many bright spots. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
