Bright Spots On Occator Crater Of Ceres Consist of Mineral Salt As It Gives New Hope That Extraterrestrial Life Is Possible

The dwarf planet Ceres is now the focus of astronomers as a significant bright spot was seen on its surface, the Dawn space probe which is observing the asteroid Vesta has been passing through Ceres for almost two years. The images captured by Dawn were the crater of Occator and the discovery has amazed the scientists of another possible clue to the existence of life in Ceres. However, the theory is not yet proven, or else it the dwarf planet can support life now or it has already supported back then.

The difference with the volcanoes of Ceres comes with the amazement that it does not release hot lava but instead, produces ice and spits out ice during its eruptions. According to reports from Space, Ceres has been discovered to have ice volcanoes or termed as cryovolcano and it releases brine and ice. The bright spot which Dawn has captured is the bright, mineral salt that comes out of the Occator crater during its explosions, as it was also seen by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) when it accumulated.

However, the salt content of the Occator crater of Ceres planet seems to be young at 4 million years old, as compared to its crater of 30 million years of age and our solar system which is already 5 billion years old. Based on reports from Raw Story, the crater which is already having activities for almost 30 million years has been emitting this salt form for just 4 million years, as MPS called to be "subsurface brine." Astronomers at the MPS thought that the bright spot was caused by a collision on the surface of the Occator crater by a huge object, thus initiating the eruption of the cryovolcano.

The dwarf planet Ceres' distance from the earth is almost as far as the earth is from the sun, but astronomers are not stopping in discovering more of what this planet has to offer. Considering its capacity to maintain water, scientists would like to think that there are living forms already existing there. With or without life forms at this present time, it is most likely that it may have supported life in the past and is still significant to the discovery that life outside earth is possible.