... well, okay; "asteroid" translating to "starlike" was always a crap name, for any of our rocks and snowballs which ain't Jupiter. But to the degree we define this term as "planetesimal between Mars and Jupiter", Ceres ain't that, neither.
To the extent the Asteroid Belt is made of planetesimals which Jupiter and the inner-planets prevented from coalescing; Ceres is an interloper. It is not even Jovian.
Lately I had been pondering the ice on Ganymede and Callisto. Theirs is a singular ice: water. When you go to Saturn, those moons also have ammonia - hydrocarbons, on Titan. Out 30 AU Triton and Pluto have nitrogen ice. Ceres is heavily ammoniac.
São Paulo propose that Ceres is a Saturnine body that has entered into a subJovian orbit.
No comments:
Post a Comment