An ‘Ocean World’ with Water Beneath its Surface is Much Closer to Earth Than Astronomers Thought

The presence of water is a huge hint that alien life can also be dwelling in a certain cosmic area. Water is a crucial component to all life forms on Earth, and scientists remain highly faithful that life on other space objects can emerge. However, they have another strong reason to cling on hope.

Ceres has been pretty much ignored by astronomers since it’s only a dwarf planet that measures 940 meters in diameter. The object is located within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it suddenly became more attractive to scientists.

Is Ceres an ocean world?

Data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft allowed scientists to conclude that a vast ocean of water could exist beneath the surface of Ceres. They believe there’s compelling evidence of a reservoir of brine – salt-enriched water existing below the dwarf planet’s surface.

Carol Raymond, a planetary scientist and also principal investigator of the Dawn spacecraft, declared:

This elevates Ceres to ‘ocean world’ status, noting that this category does not require the ocean to be global,

In the case of Ceres, we know the liquid reservoir is regional scale but we cannot tell for sure that it is global. However, what matters most is that there is liquid on a large scale.

The scientists focused on the Occator Crater that’s 57-mile-wide (92-km-wide). This structure formed due to an impact that occurred about 22 million years ago in Ceres’ northern hemisphere. Ceres is now added to the list of cosmic objects from our solar system that have high chances of being able to host any life forms. Titan, Europa, and of course – Mars – are the other bodies that are worth analyzing more in the future of space exploration.

The new research was published in the journals Nature Geoscience,  Nature Astronomy, and Nature Communications.

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