The search for extraterrestrial life led astronomers to research the most remote points of the universe for signs of life.

However, a new study suggests that we may not need to look so far from our “home”, the Daily Mail notes.

According to NASA researchers, the frozen dwarf planet Ceres may have once hosted microbial life.

Although scientists are not sure that they have ever appeared living beings, they are now sure that the Kerra had the right conditions to help this life survive.

Previous research has shown that the Kera has hidden lakes with salty water beneath the surface and organic carbon molecules – two of the essential ingredients for life.

However, the dwarf planet is still lacking anything that could supply germs.

Now, using computational models to simulate Ceres’ past, researchers have shown that this was not always the case.

2.5 to 4 billion years ago, radioactive heated water would have created a “buffet for microorganisms” that could have supported simple forms of life.

Today, Kera, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, is a barren icy desert.

In 2018, NASA’s Dawn mission discovered that the reflective layers on the surface of the planet were actually a liquid residue from a liquid that had once sprinkled from the ground.

This liquid came from huge underground brine tanks, which currently have a temperature of approximately ° C (-81 ° F) – too low to support any known form of life.

However, between 500 million and two billion years after Ceres was created, the decomposition of radioactive minerals in its rocky interior would have produced a steady supply of hot water.

According to researchers’ simulations, water near the core would have reached temperatures exceeding 270 ° C (530 ° F).

This hot water would have sprinkled to the surface, mixing it with cold water.

This may not look like food at all as we recognize it, but of such sources of hot water can in fact be decisive for the development of life.

Head researcher Sam Courville, who is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, says: “On Earth, when hot water from depths, mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for germs – a chemical celebration.

“Therefore, it would have a major impact if we could determine if the Ceres ocean had a hydrothermal fluid influx in the past,” he says.

If he had developed life in Ceres, a kind of germ, which draws his energy from chemical reactions, he could have survived thanks to the supply of hot water.

Professor Helen Williams, a specialist in the formation of planets by the University of Cambridge, who did not participate in the study, told the Daily Mail: “This research is truly exciting because it shows that the hand could have had water on its surface.

Water acts as a means of transporting and concentrating elements that are also essential to life.

These elements are also concentrated on the rocks, so the water filled through these rocks would carry and gather these elements near the surface of the planet, creating conditions extremely favorable to the development of life. “

Unfortunately, scientists say that our opportunity to find alien life in this distant dwarf planet has long been lost.

The radioactive materials that provided heat were decomposed billions of years ago, removing the source of fuel.

Unlike some moons, such as the moon of Saturn Enceladus or the Moon of Jupiter Europe, the Kera is not heated by the intense gravitational attraction and repulsion of a nearby planet, so it is now cold to host life.

However, researchers say this discovery opens up for life forms elsewhere.

Professor Williams argues that “these results certainly show us that a wider category of planets could be habitable, although it depends on many other factors, such as the distance of these planets from the central star of their solar systems.”

Since Ceres was able to become habitable exclusively thanks to his native radioactivity, so could the same for planets of similar size.

In their study, published in Science Advances, Mr Courville and other authors argue: “Because of their large number, these bodies may represent the most abundant type of habitable environment in the early solar system.”