Astronomers Believe A Dwarf Planet In The Middle Of Our Solar System Has Crust That’s 90% Ice, Meaning The Giant Asteroid May Have Once Been Covered With Muddy Water
Astronomers think that a dwarf planet hiding in the middle of our solar system could be a source of frozen water.
The dwarf planet Ceres is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. A new study has found that its crust consists of 90 percent ice.
The discovery of the ice crust has given scientists the impression that the giant asteroid was once a world covered with muddy water.
Ceres was first discovered in 1801, and scientists have been studying it ever since. It is both a dwarf planet and the biggest asteroid in our solar system. It has a diameter of roughly 590 miles and contains craters, volcanoes, and landslides.
In 2007, NASA sent the Dawn spacecraft to Ceres for the purpose of studying it. In 2015, the spacecraft reached the dwarf planet and orbited it until 2018.
At the time, astronomers did not think water existed on the asteroid because of all the craters on the surface. The reigning belief was that Ceres had less than 30 percent ice and was relatively dry.
However, the new study asserts that there may be ice beneath the surface of Ceres due to the planet’s mass and the way the craters formed.
“We think there’s lots of water-ice near Ceres surface, and that it gets gradually less icy as you go deeper and deeper,” said Mike Sori, an assistant professor at Purdue University’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
“People used to think that if Ceres was very icy, the craters would deform quickly over time, like glaciers flowing on Earth, or like gooey flowing honey.”
Inga Av – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“However, we’ve shown through our simulations that ice can be much stronger in conditions on Ceres than previously predicted if you mix in just a bit of solid rock.”
The researchers used data from the Dawn mission and computer simulations to come to their conclusion. They mapped out an actual crater on Ceres and used the resulting information to create virtual models.
The simulations illustrated how the dwarf planet’s craters change shape over the course of billions of years.
They included craters of various sizes in different areas of Ceres, from the equator to the poles, since temperature affects how materials on the planet behave.
The results suggest that Ceres has much more ice than scientists initially thought. It used to be a frozen ocean like Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Over time, the muddy ocean froze, creating an icy crust while still preserving the cratered surface. The ice-rich crust was able to keep its craters and remain pretty much unchanged because even just a small amount of materials mixed with the ice makes it stronger.
The new findings could justify a space mission to Ceres, giving astronauts a rare opportunity to explore an icy world up close.
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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