It's an exciting time for those who work in the study of the stars, as there's even a plan to colonize Mars starting 2024; now, a Ceres mysterious light baffles scientists, as geeks and astronomy lovers around the world get a glimmer of hope on whether these lights mean Earth isn't alone in the universe - nor even the Galaxy!
Earlier this month, Food World News reported two exciting space news: that the Mars One astronaut selection process had reached a new stag and that NASA was researching the possibility of life beyond the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa; now, the Ceres mysterious light could be bringing back the focus to the icy dwarf planet.
According to Newsweek, the news about the Ceres mysterious light came from the Dawn spacecraft, a National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) project that has taken to study objects between Mars and Jupiter since 2007, detected two different mysterious lights as it gets closer to Ceres.
The dwarf planet, which sits in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and was discovered in 1801, is the largest space object in the area and, though it's in the asteroid belt, it doesn't behave at all like any sort of asteroid.
Late last week, NASA scientists confirmed the news about the Ceres mysterious light in a statement, where they said they'd been able to see some bright spots in Ceres from the Hubble Telescope, but as Dawn approaches further, they're getting brighter and it has become evident that they come from a very small place - and scientists have absolutely no idea what these lights could mean.
This week, on March 6, Dawn will be captured into Ceres' orbit to begin a mission that'll explore the dwarf planet, bringing further information about the planet and even the Ceres mysterious lights.
According to ARS Technica, the working hypothesis for Ceres' mysterious lights is that they could come from the dwarf planet bumping into objects in the asteroid belt, which would expose glittering patches from the icy planet.
