The largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter may have once possessed an ocean similar to Jupiter’s “ocean moon,” Europa.
A new study based on data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft suggests that the strange dwarf planet named Ceres could be an ocean world.
According to Dr. Mike Sori from Purdue University (USA), a co-author, new analyses indicate that Ceres, previously thought to be a barren, rocky body, is more like a planet in nature.
Dwarf planet Ceres may have once been an ocean world – (Image: NASA).
Dwarf planet Ceres has a diameter of 950 km and is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Despite its small size, it features complex surface characteristics such as impact craters, volcanoes, and signs of landslides.
The new research indicates that Ceres’ crust is nearly 90% ice near the surface, gradually decreasing to 0% at a depth of 117 km.
This strange structure could be the remnants of a slowly freezing ocean, becoming richer in impurities as it froze from the top down.
This discovery contradicts previous beliefs that Ceres was relatively dry, with ice content not exceeding 30%. However, the concentration of ice on the surface decreasing downwards has made the 90% figure provided by the research team reasonable.
The authors concluded that in the past, Ceres was an ocean world like Jupiter’s moon Europa, which NASA believes could harbor a subsurface ocean with life.
“As that muddy ocean froze over time, it created a crust of ice with some rocky material trapped inside,” Dr. Sori explained.
To support this argument, the authors used computer simulations to model the expansion of impact craters on the dwarf planet over billions of years.
These simulations also showed that Ceres’ ice-rich ocean had minimal flow. This contributed to the rapid solidification of the ocean as the environment in the Solar System changed over time.
According to Dr. Sori, the most interesting aspect is that we now have a frozen ocean world quite close to Earth, making it convenient for spacecraft to access and sample.
Studying ancient water-rich worlds could help explain much about the evolution of objects in the Solar System – including Earth – as well as the origins of life.
