More often than not, the good news outweighs the bad. When the IAU (International Astronomical Union) demoted Pluto in 2006 from being a "planet" to just a "dwarf planet", Ceres was astoundingly promoted from being a huge asteroid to a dwarf planet. Today, this dwarf planet becomes more and more significant.
NASA scientists have discovered the presence of ice on Ceres' surface, signifying that the dwarf planet could be hiding a huge body of water just below its frozen crust according to a news report on Yahoo News. As the Dawn spacecraft of NASA first approached Ceres, the craft detected trails of water vapor emerging from its surface.
In an interview on Scientific American, Timothy Titus, a planetary scientist of the U.S. Geological Survey, suggested that if Ceres has water in liquid form, then there could be life in the dwarf planet. "It's one of the more exciting things with these plumes, that they could be a potential exobiology target," Titus said.
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