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IIn the millions of kilometers between Mars and Jupiter turns a dwarf planet, now apparently as cold as the many other asteroids around it. But it was probably not always so. New research engages in the history of Dark’s micro-plane and find that it could have had a hot core. And that, the posing scientists, could have heated the rocky carbon world rock enough to support an ocean with liquid water – and with it, microscopic life forms.
The observations collected from the mission of the NASA dawn suggest that the asteroid was once heated from the inside by radioactive decrease. This could have infused its oceans with heat, as well as dissolved gases – including methane and carbon dioxide – which could have nourished underwater organisms. The result could have looked like hydrothermal vents on earth, creating “a buffet for microbes – a chemical energy festival,” said the main author of the new study, Sam Courville, researcher at Arizona State University, in a press release. The results were published recently in Scientific advances.
“The ocean of Ceres has probably become a cold and concentrated brine” without energy to keep life alive, note the authors of the study. Its hottest era was probably some 4 to 2.5 billion years. Just when life seems to have emerged on earth. Now Ceres is covered with an ice shell about 30 miles thick. But as new observations are coming, they could warm up the search for the history of life in our solar system.
Image of lead: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
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