Overview

• Thermal and geochemical models indicate Ceres’ rocky interior heated early from radioactive decay, generating hot, chemically rich fluids that rose into a subsurface brine layer.
• Researchers identify a likely habitable window roughly 500 to 2,000 million years after Ceres formed, corresponding to about 2.5 to 4.0 billion years ago.
• Observations from NASA’s Dawn mission underpin the models, including bright surface salts, a large subsurface brine reservoir, and detected organic molecules.
• The study finds no direct evidence of life and concludes present-day Ceres is too cold, with concentrated brines and insufficient internal heat to sustain habitability.
• Authors say the pattern may extend to similar-sized icy worlds without tidal heating, bolstering the case for targeted exploration or sample-return searches for biosignatures.