{"id":208806,"date":"2017-02-17T07:57:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T12:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/uncategorized\/nasas-dawn-mission-finds-lifes-building-blocks-on-dwarf-planet-ceres-los-angeles-times.php"},"modified":"2017-02-17T07:57:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T12:57:43","slug":"nasas-dawn-mission-finds-lifes-building-blocks-on-dwarf-planet-ceres-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/nasa\/nasas-dawn-mission-finds-lifes-building-blocks-on-dwarf-planet-ceres-los-angeles-times.php","title":{"rendered":"NASA&#8217;s Dawn mission finds life&#8217;s building blocks on dwarf planet Ceres &#8211; Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>    It sure doesnt pay to underestimate Ceres: NASAs Dawn spacecraft has spotted signs of    organic molecules on the frigid dwarf planet.  <\/p>\n<p>    The findings, published this weekin the    journal Science, may shed light on the prevalence of pre-life    chemistry in the solar system while marking Ceres as one of the    worlds that could potentially host microbial life.  <\/p>\n<p>    Because Ceres is a dwarf planet that may still preserve    internal heat from its formation period and may even contain a    subsurface ocean, this opens the possibility that primitive    life could have developed on Ceres itself, Michael Kppers of the European Space Agency, who was not    involved in the study, wrote in a commentary. It joins Mars and several    satellites of the giant planets in the list of locations in the    solar system that may harbor life.  <\/p>\n<p>    Ceres, one of five dwarf planets in the solar system, is also    an asteroid the largest of them, in fact. Formed around    4.5 billion years ago, it sits in the belt of rocky debris that    lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  <\/p>\n<p>    Asteroids are the leftover building blocks of planetary    formation, largely unchanged by thegeologic processes    that occur onEarth and other planets. Bystudying    these space fossils, scientists hope topiece together    what the early solar system looked like.  <\/p>\n<p>    Among the asteroids, Ceres is special. As a dwarf planet, it    got stuck somewhere along the way to becoming a full-grown    world. Frozen in this state, Ceres also offers a snapshot of    planetary adolescence.  <\/p>\n<p>    Scientists have long wondered whether asteroids had not just water but    also organic matter that could have been brought to Earth,    perhaps providingthe right chemical ingredients for    lifeto emerge. Water and organic molecules have been    discovered in meteorites that are thought to be chunks of    asteroids that fell to Earth. But its also possible these    meteorites werecontaminated or transformed by Earths    environment.  <\/p>\n<p>    Hints of organics have been found on two actual asteroids,    24 Themis and 65 Cybele, though in both casesthe signal    was pretty weak. (ESAs Rosetta mission found clear signals on    comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko    howeverthat, of course, is not an asteroid.)  <\/p>\n<p>    Thanks to theDawn spacecraft, which reached the frigid    little world in 2015, scientists have detected super-bright    salt deposits in Cerescraters and identified Ahuna Monsas an    ice    volcano. But now, using its Visible and Infrared Mapping    Spectrometerinstrument, the spacecraft has    spottedorganics lying on the surface.  <\/p>\n<p>    When light hits any material, that material will absorb certain    wavelengths while reflecting the rest. Since the absorbed    wavelengths are unique to the materials properties, those    missing bands of light serve asa chemical fingerprint    that a spectrometer can useto determinethe    composition of the surface.  <\/p>\n<p>    The organic matter detected on Cereslies in a roughly    1,000-square-kilometer area near an approximately    50-kilometer-wide crater named Ernutet. While the scientists arent sure exactly    what the compounds are, the fingerprint is characteristic of    material containing carbon-hydrogen bonds, and may include    components like methyl and methylene.  <\/p>\n<p>    We were not expecting to see something like this on the    surface of Ceres, said study coauthor Christopher Russell, a UCLA planetary scientist    and Dawns principal investigator. These simple molecules, he    added, are really pre-biological, but theyre in the family of    materials that we would expect if Ceres was working its way    along the complexity path.  <\/p>\n<p>    Together with some of the other stuff already known to be on Ceres, this    makes for what could theoretically be a life-friendly    environment, perhaps even an environment with the right    chemical precursors for life.  <\/p>\n<p>    The combined presence on Ceres of ammonia-bearing hydrated    minerals, water ice, carbonates, salts, and organic material    indicates a very complex chemical environment, suggesting    favorable environments to prebiotic chemistry, the study    authors wrote.  <\/p>\n<p>    But how did the organics get there?  <\/p>\n<p>    One possibility is that they were delivered by comets or other    asteroids. But the distribution of theorganic material    doesnt match the pattern that would have beenleft by an    impact. Besides, the authors pointed out,any organic-rich    body that slammed into Ceres would probably be superheated by    the collision, causing much of that organic matter to break    down.  <\/p>\n<p>    If the organics really didoriginate on Ceres itself, as    the authors suspect, then researchers willhave to figure    out how this material made it from the interior of    thedwarf planet to its surface. For now,    thatprocess remains a mystery.  <\/p>\n<p>    Whatever the explanation, the findings show that Ceres    like Mars and other worlds such asSaturns    moonEnceladus may also have the right chemical    ingredients for life.  <\/p>\n<p>    Scientists could learn more if they were able tolook at    the isotopic composition of thewater ice, Russell added.    This could reveal whether Ceres formed where it lies, or    whether it formed farther out and eventually moved in.  <\/p>\n<p>    But that would require a lander of some sort, he pointed out,    not the type ofremote sensing instruments on Dawn. That    job, he added,would have to wait for a future mission to    the dwarf planet.  <\/p>\n<p><!-- Auto Generated --><\/p>\n<p>More here: <\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/sciencenow\/la-sci-sn-life-asteroid-ceres-20170216-story.html\" title=\"NASA's Dawn mission finds life's building blocks on dwarf planet Ceres - Los Angeles Times\">NASA's Dawn mission finds life's building blocks on dwarf planet Ceres - Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> It sure doesnt pay to underestimate Ceres: NASAs Dawn spacecraft has spotted signs of organic molecules on the frigid dwarf planet.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/nasa\/nasas-dawn-mission-finds-lifes-building-blocks-on-dwarf-planet-ceres-los-angeles-times.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nasa"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}