Researchers have discovered organic compounds, the building blocks of life, near one of the largest craters on the dwarf planet Ceres, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
According to WIONthese findings could provide important insights into Ceres’s potential to harbor life.
Ceres is the largest object in the solar system’s asteroid belt, and beneath its icy surface lie several small reservoirs of salty water. However, the discovery was made near the Ertunet crater, where researchers found evidence of aliphatic compounds: organic chemicals considered essential for life.
Maria Cristina De Sanctis, a planetologist from Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics, and her team analyzed hundreds of square kilometers around the crater and found that it was covered in these organic chemicals.
The researchers think the compounds formed over the past few million years. Because aliphatic compounds are highly vulnerable to radiation bombarding Ceres’ surface, they conclude that these organic compounds must have emerged from Ceres’ subsurface ocean no later than 10 million years ago.
Using data from NASA’s Dawn mission, which explored Ceres in 2012, the team created similar conditions in the laboratory. By mixing hydrocarbons and aliphatic compounds found near the Ertunet crater, they exposed the sample to intense ultraviolet radiation and ion bombardment.
This simulated ‘space weathering’ revealed that such compounds could not survive for long on Ceres’ surface under current conditions.
Given the abundance of these organic compounds near the crater, researchers suggest they were deposited relatively recently, within the past 10 million years.
According to De Sanctis, “The organic compounds discovered near one of Ceres’ craters may have evolved during the existence of Ceres’ ancient ocean, which lasted at least several hundred million years.”
Further modeling confirmed that the organic molecules did not come from asteroid impacts, but were instead formed deep within Ceres itself. While Ceres once housed a vast subterranean ocean, only small parts of it remain today.
Previous studies indicate that interactions between rocks and saltwater are insufficient to generate enough energy to sustain long-term habitability, but these findings point to Ceres’ intriguing potential in the distant past.
