[HN Gopher] Planet Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water bene...
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Planet Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water beneath surface,
mission finds
Author : grawprog
Score : 67 points
Date : 2020-08-10 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nerfhammer wrote:
| man, so many planets have subsurface oceans, there must be a lot
| of species of eyeless space whales across the universe
| [deleted]
| shakna wrote:
| Earth might have a subsurface ocean as well [1], though I
| haven't found any follow up since 2014 on that one.
|
| [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1253358
| noizejoy wrote:
| > whales across the universe
|
| and bowls of petunias
| JackFr wrote:
| Owkwa beltalowda!
| outworlder wrote:
| Lots of water. No Cant to remember.
| abledon wrote:
| spaceX when? 2048?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Somewhat related I saw it's going to take NASA's new
| Perseverance rover about 7 months to get to Mars and it's
| traveling at something like 25,000 MPH. Since NASA had to take
| the planetary orbits and launch timing, etc. into account I'm
| assuming that's the fastest ideal velocity for the rover but
| not necessarily the _fastest_ possible.
|
| So I guess my question is, given that Ceres is so much further
| away than Mars, what's the constraining factor for faster space
| travel? Safety? Fuel? Hardware? Technology? If Elon was going
| to spend every penny he has to get to Ceres as fast as
| possible, how would his billions best be spent?
| outworlder wrote:
| There goes the water rationing narrative in The Expanse...
| gaukes wrote:
| Ceres is one of the more interesting candidates for life in our
| solar system. Ceres is in the habitable zone for our solar system
| (although just barely), it's surface temperature is -30 F (eq. to
| winter in Greenland), and it's detected that the water on the
| surface is 20% carbon by mass (though that can mean a lot of
| things).
| api wrote:
| The question is whether there is a source of energy for that
| subsurface ocean. If it's geologically dead the entire thing
| could be uniformly quite cold. Unlike some of the moons of
| Jupiter and Saturn it's not headed by gravitational tidal
| effects.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| If that's the case why would it be an ocean at all, rather
| than a block of ice?
| smithza wrote:
| What of the lack of atmosphere and lack of active mantle/core?
| Solar energy has little chance of staying within the system.
| toshk wrote:
| I always wondered why we are overly focused on the conditions
| that created life on earth. Arguably it makes sense to see
| similar conditions lead to life. But do we really know enough
| to assume that's only way?
| freehunter wrote:
| Because it's hard to detect life on other planets. It's
| easier if we know what we're looking for. We know where we
| came from, so it's easier to detect.
| op03 wrote:
| I had to stand around waiting for a bus in 0 F for a few years
| of my life. Did not detect any life around that bus stop.
| saagarjha wrote:
| This is an excellent microcosm of the problems searchers of
| extraterrestrial intelligence face.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Dwarf planet, believed to be a barren space rock, has an
| 'extensive reservoir' of brine beneath its surface, images show
|
| Believed by who? We already knew it was made substantially of
| ice. Isn't this just discovering that some of it is liquid?
|
| Wikipedia quotes a PDF from 2017 regarding the quantity of ice,
| and by then the fact of Ceres having so much ice had already been
| worked into the story line of The Expanse.
| colordrops wrote:
| It's not a planet is it? If Pluto is not a planet, Ceres
| certainly is not either.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The first paragraph uses the term "dwarf planet".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet
| _jal wrote:
| Has anyone asked Pluto what its preferred noun is?
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