{"id":198070,"date":"2024-10-21T10:22:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T15:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/asteroid-ceres-is-a-former-ocean-world-that-slowly-formed-into-a-giant-murky-icy-orb"},"modified":"2024-10-21T10:22:49","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T15:22:49","slug":"asteroid-ceres-is-a-former-ocean-world-that-slowly-formed-into-a-giant-murky-icy-orb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/asteroid-ceres-is-a-former-ocean-world-that-slowly-formed-into-a-giant-murky-icy-orb","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid Ceres is a Former Ocean World that Slowly Formed into a Giant, Murky Icy Orb"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this asteroid\/dwarf planet. Its heavily battered and dimpled surface is covered in impact craters. Scientists have long argued that visible craters on the surface meant that Ceres could not be very icy.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Purdue University and the NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) now believe Ceres is a very icy object that possibly was once a muddy ocean world. This discovery that Ceres has a dirty ice crust is led by Ian Pamerleau, Ph.D. student, and Mike Sori, assistant professor in Purdue\u2019s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences who published their findings in Nature Astronomy. The duo along with Jennifer Scully, research scientist with JPL, used computer simulations of how craters on Ceres deform over billions of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that there\u2019s lots of water-ice near Ceres surface, and that it gets gradually less icy as you go deeper and deeper,\u201d Sori said. \u201cPeople 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. However, we\u2019ve shown through our simulations that ice can be much stronger in conditions on Ceres than previously predicted if you mix in just a little bit of solid rock.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this asteroid\/dwarf planet. Its heavily battered and dimpled surface is covered in impact craters. Scientists have long argued that visible craters on the surface meant [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}