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.
ROFL
A couple of related topics. This one though will be a GGG ping. :')
Small Comets and Our Origins
University of Iowa | circa 1999 | Louis A. Frank
Posted on 10/19/2004 11:13:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1250694/posts
An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the Biosphere
American Scientist | September-October 2001 | Armand H. Delsemme
Posted on 09/06/2004 8:16:38 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1208497/posts
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Hmmm...could be a potentially huge source of hydrogen fuel someday.
Time to order more MRE's.
Remember to tip your waitress!
Meega, Nala Queesta!
Since then water has been found to be common in the solar system--a main component. We ought to inventory the smaller icy bodies and decide where it would be best to send them and how to handle and manage them so we don't waste any. And then begin moving them to the moon, to Mars.
Move'm to a moon orbit and use a space elevator to move the water to the surface, eh?
They would be moved. That will be quite a project in itself. What is done with them once they get to the moon is yet another project, and a much bigger one. They can be dropped directly and gently onto the surface, but some serious preparation needs to be done or much of the resource will be lost to space. At least it must be buried and sealed before it begins to melt and vaporize. It would just boil off.
Big brown marble.
Ceres: 930 km = 577.8752088 miles
Pluto: 2274 km = 1,412.9980911 miles
(making Ceres about .0684 the volume of Pluto, I think)
http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm
Whoops! Better late than never I suppose...
It's never too late, Fred.
Your post is exactly what I was talking about. Thanks.
Interesting. Very interesting.
This moon or something similar would make big changes on Mars or on the moon. It might not be a good idea to bring it to earth. Even the mass changes to the moon would have to be looked at since the moon and earth are gravitationally linked.
The white spot on Ceres may be water, but could also be a fresh impact crater.
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