Looking for water in outer space is no easy feat, however a dwarf planet that was believed to have a little bit of H2O on its surface might have more than meets the eye. Ceres resides in the main asteroid belt, a collection of mostly large rocky bodies, but it is actually considered a dwarf planet and it just surprised astronomers.
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00:00Looking for water in outer space is no easy feat.
00:06However, a dwarf planet that was believed to have a little bit of H2O on its surface
00:11might have more than meets the eye.
00:13Ceres resides in the main asteroid belt, a collection of mostly large rocky bodies.
00:17But it is actually considered a dwarf planet.
00:19For years, experts believed that there was some icy mud on the dwarf planet's surface.
00:23But new observations appear to show much, much more.
00:27Experts now say it is likely that the crust of Ceres is composed of some 90% water, meaning
00:32its cratered, rocky-looking surface is actually cratered ice.
00:36And in fact, that's why astronomers didn't believe it had that much surface ice.
00:39Because they thought that it would smooth and look more like other ice planets if that
00:43were the case.
00:44With planetary geophysicist Mike Sori saying about that theory,
00:47People used to think that if Ceres was very icy, the craters would deform quickly over
00:51time, like glaciers flowing on Earth or like gooey, flowing honey.
00:55However, we've shown through our simulations that ice can be much stronger in conditions
00:59on Ceres than previously predicted if you mix in just a little bit of solid rock.
01:03Experts say that Ceres likely used to be a muddy ocean world, but cooled over time and
01:07froze.
01:08And since it doesn't orbit a planet, it doesn't have tidal activity or anything to warm it
01:12from the inside, meaning it's completely frozen solid.