Named planets of the Solar System that had all conditions for the emergence of life

The dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may once have possessed all the basic "ingredients" for life. An international team of scientists has discovered that billions of years ago, a long-term source of chemical energy existed beneath the object's surface that could have supported microbial organisms. The work was published in the journal Science Advances.

"On Earth, hot water from the depths, mixing with the ocean, becomes a real feast for microbes. Therefore, it's important to understand if something similar existed on Ceres," said the lead author of the work, Sam Courville, a researcher at the University of Arizona.

Previously, the Dawn mission, which ended in 2018, discovered salt, organic molecules, and traces of a subsurface saline ocean on Ceres. Now a third element has been added to this picture - chemical energy that arose from the interaction of water and gases coming from heated rocks in the core.

Scientists modeled the temperature and chemical evolution of Ceres and showed that from 2.5 to 4 billion years ago, its interior released heat from the decay of radioactive elements. This heated the water and saturated it with methane and carbon dioxide - potential "fuel" for microbial metabolisms.

Today, Ceres has already lost its internal heat sources, its water has almost completely frozen, and the remaining liquid has turned into concentrated brine. But in the past, the dwarf planet experienced a "window of habitability," when life there could at least theoretically have emerged.

The authors of the work note: the results are important not only for Ceres. Similar scenarios could have unfolded on other icy bodies of the Solar System of similar size, where there is no attraction of giant planets creating heat, as on Europa or Enceladus.