Ceres' Bright Spots are Probably Salt and What That Means - News Ledge

The bright spots of Ceres. They were hard to miss when Dawn first saw them as it approached the dwarf planet. What are they? It’s a question that has left scientists scratching their head ever since they first saw them. Scientists came up with two leading theories. Ice or salt.

Today, the Dawn team is leaning heavy in the salt camp. “We believe this is a huge salt deposit,” Dawn’s principal investigator Chris Russell said on Monday at the European Planetary Science Congress. “We know it’s not ice, and we’re pretty sure it’s salt, but we don’t know exactly what salt at the present time.”

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