Discover organic matter in the second object in the solar system with the most water.

On December 2, researchers from the Astrophysics Institute of Andalusia and the CSIC, using data from the Dawn mission, which was the orbit of Ceres and which allowed us to have all these data and images of Ceres, as these researchers have identified 11 new regions that suggest the existence of an internal deposit of organic materials. Not only have these researchers discovered that there are more organic molecules on Ceres, I mean more molecules than previously thought, but they have also discovered that they do not come from outside, because when the NASA spacecraft got there and the alarms started going off of organic molecules, it was thought that they could have arrived aboard asteroids and comets, well no, now what is known is that those organic molecules molecules that are essential for life to form come from the interior of Ceres, where they can also there is so much water that it can be the object of the inner solar system with the most water after the earth. Ceres is small, it is about 980 km in diameter and the inner solar system is the one that goes from the asteroid belt to the Sun, that is, moons like Europa. Europa is practically as big as our moon, or Ganymede, which is bigger than ours. moon, is larger than the Planet Mercury or Titan, which is also enormous, those moons continue to have the record for liquid water in the entire solar system, it has more water than the planet Earth, at least the oceans of the planet Earth because we also know that under the Earth's surface There is also a lot of water inside the earth.

In addition, it would be water with a lot of salt and materials essential for life, Ceres is not so far from the sun as to maintain ice on its surface, the snow line which is the area in which the sun's heat is no longer intense enough To vaporize water ice it would be around Jupiter, which is why Jupiter has moons with an ice crust like Ganymede or the moon Europa, but Ceres is even closer, it is in an area where enough solar heat reaches it to vaporize any ice. let it end the surface of ceres and that it ends up exposed to the sun, it also lacks a protective atmosphere and is too small to maintain gases. As you can see in the image of the bright spots on Ceres, scientists came to the conclusion that they are salts, they are the remains of a very brackish liquid mass, which came to the surface perhaps due to the impact of an asteroid, the water evaporated when surfaced and escaped into space, but left behind a crust of highly reflective salt on the surface that reflects the sun's rays creating those famous bright spots on Ceres. Organic molecules are essential for life, for life to form and for life to feed, living beings produce organic molecules but organic molecules do not need to be produced by living beings, they can be produced naturally, there are organic molecules that they are only produced by living beings, yes, they would be biomarkers but we have not yet discovered those biomarkers in Ceres, keep in mind that the Dawn mission did not take, unfortunately, it did not land, so we do not have all the data that we would like Ceres.

The graph above shows the interior of Ceres, what we think it would have, a layer of ice, a rock crust from asteroids, from all these salts, for example, from the bright spots, from dust from the impacts of asteroids, a thick layer of ice and a rocky core, but according to these Spanish researchers there could also be masses of liquid water under the surface of Ceres. Ceres does not have internal heat due to gravitational interactions as occurs with the moon Europa, which suffers from the so-called tidal forces, that is, the moon Europa has internal heat thanks to those tidal forces that are constantly stretching and squeezing the core of the planet. moon Europa, the same thing happens to what is closest to Jupiter, but stronger, that is why it is a planet and a volcanic moon. The ice on Ceres could occasionally turn into liquid water, that ice could in the past be liquid when Ceres was warmer during the formation of the solar system, remember that Ceres is very old, it is believed that Ceres is the last protoplanet that exists in the inner solar system, when the solar system was formed the cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the sun condensed to form initially small asteroids that, although they do not receive that name, and then protoplanets that would be larger objects where gravity would be sufficiently intense. how so they already achieved a spherical shape. They would be like the germs of planets and there would be dozens, perhaps hundreds of protoplanets and the last one could be Ceres, the big question is they were all like that, they all had a large amount, at least in this case, water ice but at the time they could have liquid water because It kept a lot of heat from the initial moments of the formation of these protoplanets, surely its appearance would be similar to what we see of the moon Europa, because the sun at that time was somewhat colder than today, it was weaker, it probably had a layer of ice and under that layer of ice there would be liquid water in abundance.

The most impressive of the Ceres craters is Occator, right now it is where the most extensive bright areas are located, scientists have confirmed that the bright regions are young and some are less than 2 million years old, they also found that the geological activity that drives salt deposits is still ongoing and has not stopped. This conclusion depended on all the analyzes that have been made of this salt, in fact, it is believed that these white dots are brine deposits, we would be seeing the largest brine spring in the enormous solar system. And all that from the interior of Ceres, what more secrets can this space object keep.