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

I wonder what's keeping that water liquid. There's no gravitational tugging like with Jupiter's or Saturn's moons, no hot core (I assume).

a reply to: wildespace


This is not at all the same situation as Europa, which has a global ocean covered with ice. The thinking here is that material found on the surface originates from deep within the body and migrates upward through cracks which resulted from an impact very long ago. Calling it an "ocean world" is not really accurate.

Think of it more as a pocket of underground water mixed with a lot of salt. Such a material would have a very low freezing temperature.

“For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago,” said Raymond, principal investigator for the Dawn mission. “The impact heat subsided after a few million years. However, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.”

news.berkeley.edu...

originally posted by: MindBodySpiritComplex
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

This is great to see, finally some up to date news on ceres. Also thanks for the thread shout out that I originally posted on CERES. Contact May Have Been Made. there friend, much appreciated!

I knew there was something off about this planet I was not totally sure whether we were talking salt, ice, lights or any of the other ideas people came up with but one thing is sure, this is an interesting rock floating around now they have found this.

There is a possibility that life may be under that surface and who knows we may be talking early prehistoric fish would certainly be cool, if thats where its at however it is as old as the earth, so who knows, possibly more advanced like may lurk there. I am not rejecting any possibilities of life now, it is just a matter of time.

and I would say publicly matter of time, as I think those higher up echelons certainly know something. Why would they spend as much money as they do, searching for what they do.

Thanks for the update anyway

Well, the higher ups might just be as interested as the rest of us to actually find something and not yet have any further knowledge than the rest of us. Who knows?

a reply to: BlackProject

originally posted by: MindBodySpiritComplex

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

Hey now, nobody mentioned Uranus!

that is because we call it "yur-anne-us"

ETA

There is nothing fun about it not being the other I suppose in today's society.

I lean toward the Exploding Planet Hypothesis and haven't seen a reason to not think Mars is in the mix on that event.

originally posted by: charlyv
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.

When I see Ceres mentioned, I always think about the indie film The American Astronaut.

I hope someday somebody builds a dusty bar there that has a dance contest.

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight
a reply to: Phage

Try reading what it actually says.

Ceres

Surface temp. Ceres (/ˈsɪəriːz/; minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. ... It is the 25th-largest body in the Solar System within the orbit of Neptune

Why do they say its inside Neptune's orbit and not Jupiters orbit, I must be thick

Time for a coffee

IF someone answered, I apologize.

Every thing after Neptune going away from Sol is smaller, that we officially believe is out there past Neptune.

originally posted by: OneBigMonkeyToo
a reply to: game over man

There could be a bunch of factors.

The freezing point of water varies with pressure, and is also influenced by the solute content (salt water freezes at much lower temperatures). Currents will inhibit freezing, as would any kind of heated core providing a mechanism for those currents.

Any combination of those would keep salt water liquid.

I am going to bet wet means to the touch not like clear water without ice. The mass of Ceres is not enough IMO to generate any significant heat to keep it from being a solid ice ball. There might be something heating up the core that is not here in this data.

a reply to: Justoneman
thanks

I wouldn’t be surprised at the least if there is life there and maybe even complex life. I would be surprised if they tell us about it though. I would be willing to bet a shiny penny that the solar system and universe is teeming with life and advanced civilizations such as ours and even greater.