Posted on 08/10/2020 4:46:24 PM PDT by NRx
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.
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity, enabling the Nasa Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface.
Now a team of scientists from the United States and Europe have analysed images relayed from the orbiter, captured about 35km (22 miles) from the asteroid.
They focused on the 20-million-year-old Occator crater and determined that there is an extensive reservoir of brine beneath its surface.
Several studies published on Monday in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications also shed further light on the dwarf planet, which was discovered by the Italian polymath Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801.
Using infrared imaging, one team discovered the presence of the compound hydrohalite a material common in sea ice but which until now had never been observed off of Earth.
Maria Cristina De Sanctis, from Romes Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica said hydrohalite was a clear sign Ceres used to have sea water.
We can now say that Ceres is a sort of ocean world, as are some of Saturns and Jupiters moons, she told AFP.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Great! Now, I can build a rest stop and cafe there. The soup of the day is always your best bet.
“Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity, enabling the Nasa Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface.”
I don’t know how common it is for a “planet” to have its own gravity or not. But I’m glad it does. Otherwise I guess any pictures taken of it would have just drifted off into space.
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Actually - perhaps the sentence does make sense. If it didn’t have its own gravity none of the bits and pieces would have stayed together to form an object that one could photograph.
I read Tiamat's Wrath at some point last year and am also looking forward to the next book. I need to re-read them again as well.
Are you Ceres? And don’t call me Shirley.
Ice Pirates
Oh, so Ceres is a planet but Pluto is not?
Yeah, she's got a bit of sexiness. I get it. I find astrophysicist chicks hot. Janna Levin is number one.
Is “dwarf planet” on NASA’s list of no-no names?
I’m goin’ to Surf City...
“Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity”
idiotic reporter, obviously a useless journalism degree with no science as part of it.
idiotic reporter, obviously a useless journalism degree with no science as part of it.
Not having researched Ceres myself, does he actually mean that the gravity on Ceres is strong enough to force Ceres into a round shape? That would explain why it would be a dwarf planet rather than an asteroid.
Bkmk
Crash it into MARS. It will increase Mars mass and provide more water.
Mass
ceres 9.39 × 10^20 kg
Mars 6.417 × 10^23 kg
Earth 5.9722×10^24
Venus 4.868×10^24
Well shoot, that would only increase Mars to 6.426 x 10^23. We need to increase Mars by 9 times it current size.
We need to crash Mars into Venus. Along with 100 Ceres.
This teraforming is trickier than it looks.
“Theoretically” is also never used in conjunction with these claims, knowing the reader will take it as “fact”. These experts are no more ethical than someone selling a used car and they clearly have incentive to embellish their claims, for fame.
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You’re reading a news article written by a ding-a-ling, not a scientific article in a journal.
Ceres was discovered on the first night of the 19th century. The discoverer, Giuseppe Piazzi, was a Sicilian and named it after the patron goddess of ancient Sicily, Ceres.
That is true. It’s just wishful thinking... ;-)
Thanks KC_Lion. Nice to see it called "planet" in the headline, alas, still called dwarf planet in the body of the article. :^)
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All objects have their own gravity. The author makes it seem special, as though it has to be large enough to have gravity.
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