Posted on 09/30/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by blam
Icy world found inside asteroid
Ron Cowen
New observations of Ceres, the largest known asteroid, suggest that frozen water may account for as much as 25 percent of its interior. If this is true, the volume of ice on Ceres would be greater than that of all the fresh water on Earth.
CERES SERIES. This sequence of Hubble images reveals a bright spot of unknown origin on Ceres during a quarter-turn of the asteroid's 9-hour rotation. Thomas, et al., NASA
The evidence comes from Hubble Space Telescope images showing that the 930-kilometer-wide asteroid is smooth and almost perfectly round. Simulations show that a body as massive as Ceres can have that shape and texture only if materials inside it have separated into layers of higher– and lower-density compounds. A period of heating and cooling, such as that experienced by the solar system's rocky inner planets, could have caused light material to move toward the asteroid's surface and denser material to sink.
In the Sept. 8 Nature, Peter Thomas of Cornell University and his colleagues suggest that the outer, low-density material is probably ice because Ceres' surface shows signs of water-bearing minerals and because the asteroid's overall density is lower than that of Earth's rocky crust. The proposed ice layer would lie just beneath a thin crust of clay and carbon-rich compounds and above a rocky core, the researchers say.
Ceres is one of several hundred thousand bodies that lie in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The layering provides new evidence that Ceres is a case of arrested development. It's "an embryonic planet" halted by Jupiter's gravity from packing on additional material to become a full-fledged planet, says study coauthor Lucy McFadden of the University of Maryland in College Park.
Next year, NASA plans to launch a mission called Dawn, which will orbit Ceres in 2015 and then move on to Vesta, the second-largest known asteroid.
Might one of these smaller asteroids plunged into earth and flooded all the land?
The heat from entry would melt the ice...would it come down as rain, or?
Ping.
An icy world.....sounds just like a normal day at the Hillary Clinton residence.
ummm,... can you put a pipe on that? Arizona needs the water.
This is hugh and Ceres!
That's the biggest asteroid ever seen. It would crack the earth's crust, do more damage than 10,000 H bombs, and throw the earth of its axis.. Well that would be it for the humans
Send it to Mars.
"Might one of these smaller asteroids plunged into earth and flooded all the land?"
I was thinking of a much smaller version as the source of water for the worldwide bibical flood.
Let's crash Ceres into Venus.
This is strange.
My doctor never said anything about layers when we were discussing MY arrested development...
It would make the asteroid that slammed into Yucatan 65 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs look like a BB fired into a puddle from an air rifle.
The works of man (and the entire record of multicellular life) would be obliterated, absolutely and totally.
Judgement Day indeed!
Nope. The impact would vaporize all that water and send it back into space.
Put a giant shade between Venus and the sun, and drop comets rich in water and organics.
Getting rid of all that CO2 and sulfur might be a biatch, though. As well as the retrograde rotation. And no real magnetic field...
Oh hell. Let's just terraform Mars - it would be a MUCH simpler job than Venus.
(Cue Movie Trailer Voice Man)
It came from the cold, black depths of outer space to enslave mankind for all time...
Until ONE MAN decided it was time to make a stand for humanity...
"Using nanotechnology, a solar-powered mass-driver could be constructed on Ceres, placing it on a slow pathway to a gravitational resonance with Jupiter. From there, multiple encounters with Mars and Earth could place it on a trajectory towards Venus. Using multiple encounters at Venus to reduce its relative speed, part of Ceres would be converted in to a sun-screen to cool the blistering planet. Finally, the ice-rich remains of Ceres would be put on a colision course, supply the surface of Venus with much need-water.
"I envision millions of swimming pools, each inhabited by a heavenly body."
Chances are he didn't take a core sample so he could count the rings, either. It's SO hard to find quality medical care these days...
Yes it is.
Neat !!!!
A small price to pay to make sure there is enough water in Las Vegas.
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