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A dwarf planet near Mars could help astronomers in their search for alien life, as more research has been done into its abundance of organic matter.
The planet, named Ceres, lies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And scientists have found that from these asteroids, the plant holds a host of complex organics.
These organic compounds were first discovered by scientists in 2017, with the Dawn spacecraft, but a new study published in the Geological Society of America details that they may be more widespread than originally thought.
“The organics were initially detected in the vicinity of a large impact crater, which is what motivated us to look at how impacts affect these organics,” Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and leader of the study, said in a statement. “We are finding that organics may be more widespread than first reported and that they seem to be resilient to impacts with Ceres-like conditions.”
A stock photo shows a 3D impression of the dwarf planet Ceres. Organic matter on the planet could point to it sustaining life.
Ejder Ekmekci/Getty
The planet’s organic matter, along with clues that it holds a high abundance of water ice, means it may have the necessary building blocks to support extraterrestrial life.
“Although researchers have performed impact and shock experiments on various types of organics in the past,” Daly said, “what was missing was a study dedicated to the type of organics detected on Ceres using the same type of analytical method used by the Dawn spacecraft to detect them.”
Scientists say that doing this would allow them to compare both sets of data gathered from the organics on the planet.
“By capitalizing on the strengths of two different datasets collected over Ceres, we’ve been able to map potential organic-rich areas on Ceres at higher resolution,” Juan Rizos, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland who also worked on the study, said in the statement. “We can see a very good correlation of organics with units from older impacts and with other minerals like carbonates that also indicate the presence of water. While the origin of the organics remains poorly understood, we now have good evidence that they formed in Ceres and likely in the presence of water.
“There is a possibility that a large interior reservoir of organics may be found inside Ceres. So, from my perspective, that result increases the astrobiological potential of Ceres.”
The discovery of organic matter on a planet, and how widespread it is, points to the existence of life, as it points to the presence of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, which are all needed to sustain life.
Organic matter was discovered on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover in July.
The find also had implications in the search of alien life on Mars.
“They are an exciting clue for astrobiologists since they are often thought of as building blocks of life,” Joseph Razzell Hollis, a postdoctoral fellow at London’s Natural History Museum, previously told Newsweek.
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