According to Invers.com, in their research, scientists found that some organic substances necessary for life may have formed in an ocean on the dwarf planet Ceres.
The dwarf planet Ceres, the largest celestial body in the asteroid belt, has oceans of salty water beneath an icy surface containing salt and hydrocarbons.
Hundreds of square kilometers of areas where organic chemicals called aliphatics are emitted were discovered around “Ernutet”, one of the large meteorite craters on Ceres.
The research revealed that the aliphatic components in the crater may have risen to the surface relatively recently because they were destroyed very quickly by the effect of radiation bombardment in space.
EXPERIMENTS WERE DONE ON ORGANIC CHEMICALS
The research was conducted by Prof., a planetary scientist at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. Dr. He led a team led by Maria Cristina De Sanctis.
In accordance with the information obtained in the US Aeronautics and Space Agency’s (NASA) “Dawn Mission” in 2012, the team produced a mixture of chemicals similar to the chemicals in Ceres in the laboratory.
The mixture containing aliphatic organics found around the “Ernutet Crater” was bombarded with powerful ultraviolet radiation and fast-moving ions (electrically charged atoms) to mimic “space erosion” that breaks down organic molecules.
Thus, it was tried to determine how long the organic substances in question had been on the surface of Ceres from the dissolution time.
ORGANIC COMPONENTS WERE FORMED DURING THE LAST 10 MILLION YEARS
The experiment revealed that aliphatic compounds were not resistant to radiation, even when mixed with clay-like substances that provided some protection.
The research showed that such hydrocarbons around Ernutet Crater may have arrived in the region within about 10 million years.
Since most simulations suggested that organic molecules were not carried by comets or smaller asteroids but were probably formed deep within Ceres, it was inferred that the geology of Ceres formed organics fairly recently.
“IT MAY HAVE EVOLVED”
De Sanctis and his team stated in the research, “The organic compounds found in Ernutet Crater may have evolved over the life of Ceres’ deep ocean, which lasted at least several hundred million years.”
It was emphasized that the organic compounds on the surface of the crater may have come to the surface by leaking through cracks in the Ernutet Crater or by factors such as small meteor impacts and landslides.
IT MAY BE A “LIFE-HOSTING” OR “HABITABLE” AREA
The team pointed out that Ceres, and especially the area around Ernutet Crater, is one of the candidates for searching for possible “habitable” or “life-supporting environments.” The research was published in the journal Science Advances. (AA)