NASA scientists make startling discovery about alien life in our very own solar system: ‘Big implications’

Aliens may have been closer to Earth than first thought.

New research from NASA reveals that Ceres, the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, harbored the right conditions to support extraterrestrial life.

A study published in Science Advances confirmed a chemical energy source on Ceres.

While scientists don’t know if life ever actually emerged on the dwarf planet, they are now confident that it once harbored the right conditions to support it.

The icy dwarf planet is now a frozen, salty wasteland, but scientists say it likely had a long-lasting internal heat source and the crucial chemical “fuel” that life would have needed to survive.

Discovered in 1801 and measuring about 590 miles across, Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and was once considered little more than a cosmic curiosity.

But data from NASA’s Dawn mission, which orbited Ceres between 2015 and 2018, brought new questions to light.

The spacecraft spotted bright, reflective patches on the surface — residues of salt left behind by ancient, rising brine. Beneath the surface was a now-frozen subsurface ocean of salty water with organic molecules, the carbon-based building blocks of life, also detected.

Using thermal and chemical modeling, researchers led by Sam Courville — a PhD candidate at Arizona State University — simulated how Ceres’ interior worked over billions of years.

Roughly 2.5 to 4 billion years ago, radioactive decay inside Ceres’ rocky core produced enough heat to send hydrothermal fluids — hot water enriched with dissolved gases and minerals — surging up into its subsurface ocean.

On Earth, these kinds of environments — like deep-sea hydrothermal vents — are hotspots for chemotrophic microbes, which derive energy not from sunlight but from chemical reactions.

While no direct evidence of life has been found, all the necessary components were present: water, organic molecules, and energy.

“On Earth, when hot water from deep underground mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for microbes — a feast of chemical energy. So it could have big implications if we could determine whether Ceres’ ocean had an influx of hydrothermal fluid in the past,” Courville explained in a statement.

Unlike Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus, which remain geologically active due to the gravitational pull of their neighboring parent planets, Ceres is now too cold for life.

Ceres orbits alone. Its internal radioactive heating waned long ago, and today, what little liquid remains is trapped in concentrated brine beneath a layer of ice. Surface temperatures plunge to a bone-chilling –81°F.

Any hope of finding living organisms today is slim. Still, the implications are profound.

Ceres is far from alone in the solar system. Dozens of small, icy bodies — dwarf planets, moons, and asteroids — could have had similar histories.

In fact, Courville and his team suggest that these modest worlds could have represented the most abundant type of habitable environment in the early solar system.

Ceres may have once hosted alien microbes, meaning we may be surrounded by relics of long-lost alien ecosystems — not light-years away, but within reach of our next generation of explorers.