Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water beneath surface, mission finds

Planet Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water beneath surface, mission finds

The dwarf planet Ceres – long believed to be a barren space rock – is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed on Monday.

There used to be much speculation about the bright spots discovered on Ceres. Aliens, breakaway civilization, etc.

The team said the salt deposits looked like they had built up within the last 2 million years – the blink of an eye in space time.
This suggests that the brine may still be ascending from the planet’s interior, something De Sanctis said could have profound implications in future studies.
“The material found on Ceres is extremely important in terms of astrobiology,” she said.

Some ATS threads from 2015

by BlackProject
CERES. Contact May Have Been Made.

by Baltazar84
Strange lights on dwarf planet Ceres have scientists perplexed

by AshOnMyTomatoes
Strange shiny, conical, enormously tall mountain on Ceres

by neoholographic
Planet Ceres shows the signs of an intelligent civilization based on photos

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

It's always nice to get some good news these days!

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

Extremely interesting discovery, as well as possible ramification's in the search for possible life beyond our own planet it is also a possible source of fuel and resources for future space flight's, the presence of water which can also be cracked into oxygen and hydrogen also creates a potential location for a future outpost even a manned site if we ever get off our arses down here and stop bickering and back stabbing one another over petty economics and regional control, while we are fighting over the earth there is just so much potential territory and resources waiting to be exploited for the good of mankind - or the greed of corporations - that it makes us look truly like an insane race to be fighting over such petty resources on the surface of our own planet.

Ahhh I am just a dreamer but nice post.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

Ya it's pretty incredible.
I'm doing a lot of study in regards to tidal flexing on Ceres, Europe and Io in an Astrobiology course I'm taking.
A process like this Could be responsible for seeding other planets with the building blocks of life.

Planets?
We don't need no stinkin' planets!

(For the kids, it's a Bogart reference.)

originally posted by: Phage
Planets?
We don't need no stinkin' planets!

Hey now, nobody mentioned Uranus!

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

now we just gotta land on it and drill... we find something living on another celestial body and we prove life is everywhere in the universe... that would be quite the discovery

This is some very interesting news.

The abundance of watering our solar system is pretty large. Wouldn't surprise me if Ceres harbors life closer to its sea floor.

a reply to: projectvxn

Wouldn't surprise me if Ceres harbors life closer to its sea floor.

It would me.
And I like surprises. Well, some surprises.

a reply to: Phage

Seems everywhere there is water, regardless of how extreme the surrounding environment, we find life.

a reply to: projectvxn

This is true.
On Earth.

If we find it on one other planet (moon, asteroid, whatever) that will change everything.

The key is liquid flowing water.

a reply to: Phage

There are environments on Earth that are isolated and do not share the environmental conditions that most of life enjoys on Earth. Still we find life there. Mostly microbial life. It would change a lot, yes. But surprising? Why?

a reply to: projectvxn

There are environments on Earth that are isolated and do not share the environmental conditions that most of life enjoys on Earth.

Environmental conditions have changed wildly over the billions of years which life has existed here, as has the form of that life. No place on the planet can be said to be "isolated" under these terms.

It would change a lot, yes. But surprising? Why?

Because new things are often surprising. Finding life thriving around mid-ocean vents was highly surprising. Finding life on another world will also be so.

In a good way, probably. Hopefully.

a reply to: Phage

I don't know that I'd be surprised. But I do lean on bits of faith more than others. Maybe that ruins it. I would only be surprised to not find life on moons like Enceladus or Europa. Ceres might be a stretch, but who knows, there could be some cold tolerant brine thriving fish living there.

a reply to: projectvxn

There are environments on Earth that are isolated and do not share the environmental conditions that most of life enjoys on Earth.

Isn't that a self-rejecting statement ?

a reply to: projectvxn

I think fish would be really, really surprising.

But I like surprises.

a reply to: Gothmog

No. There are environments here on Earth that would kill the vast majority of Earth's species. In these place life looks conspicuously different. But life is still there. Which is the point I'm making. Hostile environments don't seem to be a barrier to the evolution of all life.

Certain life can and has evolved to thrive in environments antithetical to 99% of life as we know it. For that reason I see a logical step forward, which is the very real possibility that life is doing its weird thing on moons like Enceladus and Europa.

a reply to: projectvxn

Life does change in response to its environment (if it is to continue) but the question of how life begins is another matter.

Has that happened anywhere else but Earth? Can it happen in a place where the amount of available energy is very low? The environment on Earth when life began seems to have been quite different than that of Ceres, for example.

Ceres is the largest and Vesta is the second most massive body in the main asteroid belt,

Lots of speculation that each was formed (or deformed, as it were) by the same event that produced most of what is in the asteroid belt.

We have meteorites on Earth that have been classified as coming from Vesta, these are HED classification containing howardites, eucrites and diogenites. They are all characteristic of the surface of a planet that saw massive melting and metamorphism.

We do not have samples from Ceres, however not officially. The Vesta meteorites matched the identical spectrum analysis done by the Dawn spacecraft as it visited Vesta and Ceres. For Ceres, however, it had not made any kind of official declarations of material matches. The data used comes from spectral analysis done on all known Earth meteorites.

Hall of Meteorites

Confirming that Ceres has such subsurface oceans means it was the part that got most of the water from the collision. Vesta may be part of the destroyed planet mantle and core... or has water as well that we did not discover.

This is really a great discovery and opens up so much future research.