I give up- life is possible everywhere.

[GarrisonChisholm]

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news-detail.html?id=6982

Dawn Finds Possible Ancient Ocean Remnants at Ceres

 

So, does this mean someone needs to start modding Dres now?...

How on Earth (Kerbin) could such a tiny world host liquid water on its surface?  It could have never had an atmosphere dense enough to allow it. ...right?  0.o

 

Holy Crap-  I buried the lead;

DRES NO LONGER HAS AN EXCUSE TO BE BORING.

Edited October 26, 2017 by GarrisonChisholm

[Vanamonde]

Since this is about a real planetoid (or whatever we're calling them now), the thread has been moved to the Science subforum. 

[YNM]

Is it possible that it's a bit premature ? Ceres could be just having some "snow" over it before...

[Green Baron]

This, and shouting out "life" when there are traces of water is a little lurid. Science needs a factual basis.

H and O are abundant, but the whole "life" thing has still to be proved, NASA doesn't mention life in the linked text, they don't want to be ridiculous. It is not really news that water is one of the main ingredients in all of the bodies in the solar system.

It is a long way from self replicating chemistry over microbes, complex monocellulars, multicellulars, and whatever might come after it. Do comets host life ?

 

Edit: btw., since nobody who knows a little about minerals will find the op surprising (except the claim that there might have been an ocean which is at this point hard to follow): earths mantle has several oceans worth of water, enclosed in its various minerals. The mineral water plays a big role in keeping the whole thing ductile because it lowers the melting point (lowers the solidus temperature), thus playing a role in enabling plate tectonics, thus adding to the probability of the forming of complex life.

The study

It's interesting ;-)

Edited October 27, 2017 by Green Baron

[Green Baron]

10 hours ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

How on Earth (Kerbin) could such a tiny world host liquid water on its surface?

Yeah, the guys at nasa might have been taken away by their own minds :-)

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

And Ahuna Mons is a well, digged up by the Ceresians searching for "Where has disappeared our water?"

 

[NSEP]

Water does not immediately mean life. For life you would need also need Amino Acids and stuff. You can wait trillions of years but my glas of water is not going to become a coral reef, especially not when its in outer space.

[PB666]

Starting at 4'C the rate of biological rxns is double for each 10'c, Below 20'c life ceases in all its various functions.

Life on some ancient world that at the beginning of our system may have had an atmosphere and may have had water as the u/r 'gravitational' heat dissipated. However when our sun went into main sequence  it was no longer capable of melting water on ceres. Consequently the chemistry of life probably never made it to single cell stage.

 

[Green Baron]

So, @GarrisonChisholm, don't give up !_yet Resist ! :-)

Edited October 27, 2017 by Green Baron

[KerikBalm]

I can believe that there was out-gassing and a temporary presence of H2O on the surface. I doubt it lasted very long, and I doubt it led to life.

[GarrisonChisholm]

By heading the topic "Life is Possible Everywhere" I meant only that with liquid water (being the chiefly desired ingredient to make life possible) present on the surface of a tiny world that couldn't hold an atmosphere, I was laughably bemused, thinking something akin to "where do we draw the line?"  I did not mean to imply a belief that there was life on Ceres, or to improperly state that NASA's article said so as well.

I intended to highlight the to me comical notion that a tiny world like Ceres could host an Ocean, which unless you are calling it an "underground" or "subsurface" ocean, implying a body of water open to the sky.

If, rather than whimsical or enlightened debate, ridicule and derision are the only entertainment I can afford-  enjoy.

[JucheJuiceMan]

No laifu there no gaijin/isejin waifu for you.

Edited October 27, 2017 by JucheJuiceMan
context

[YNM]

5 hours ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

By heading the topic "Life is Possible Everywhere" I meant only that with liquid water (being the chiefly desired ingredient to make life possible) present on the surface of a tiny world that couldn't hold an atmosphere, I was laughably bemused, thinking something akin to "where do we draw the line?"

Actually, that's harder. Last I heard they found amino acids on a comet or something ?

 

But in any case, if you want to define life as in a complex machinery that solely keeps itself working, whatever that work is, then there's some possibility that we might miss a lot of thing, by assuming life elsewhere being similar to life down here.

Edited October 28, 2017 by YNM