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Dwarf planet Ceres may have been habitable – for microbes – c0.5-2B years ago
- antibull 1y ago[dead]
- PaulHoule 1y agoThe generic outer solar system body of a certain size has an internal ocean. Radioactive heat from the core can do it as can tidal heating as in the Io- Europa-Ganymede triangle. There's a difference between the case where the ocean is between two ice layers and the case where it is between an ice layer and a rock layer, the later is a better scenario for life because more diverse resources are available. You certainly can run an ecology on chemical potentials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent and it's possible that terrestrial life started in such a place but not so clear you can get a tall enough trophic hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_web to get higher forms of life and intelligence. Still I think about what happens if an ice dweller manages to drill their way up to the surface and see the stars.