News Planetary Science

Giant mud balls roamed the early solar system

Rethinking early asteroids’ rockiness could solve some meteorite mysteries 

Ceres

MUDDY OCEAN?  The dwarf planet Ceres could have once been a ball of mud with a solid core, a new model suggests.

IDA/DLR/MPS/UCLA/JPL-Caltech/NASA

By Lisa Grossman

- More than 2 years ago

The earliest asteroids were probably made of mud, not rock.

Radioactive heat in the early solar system could have melted globs of dust and ice before they had a chance to turn to rock, a new simulation published July 14 in Science Advances shows.