Amazing science ... I can't wait to hear more (assuming more can be gleaned by this spacecraft).
The article also gave me a chuckle - "after an errant cosmic ray". If that cosmic ray had behaved itself and gone where it was told we wouldn't have had any problems!
"errant" just means "wandering", from the Latin form iterare. It's where we get, for example, "a Knight errant" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight-errant), sometimes spelled "arrant". To be mistaken as 'in error' was a latter meaning which became fused.
Pretty unlikely. Not entirely impossible, but Ceres would be an odd place for ETs to set up shop and then stay hush for a few eons.
More likely it's water or sulphur. I think we may be in for a big "Ceres is volcanically (could by cryovolcanism) active" shock, given the lack of cratering they've also observed.
It's a decent size, its composition is only hypothetically known, it may have more latent heat than we expect. If so, it's extremely exciting news, as it means it's not quite the inhospitable cold, dry, rock we expected.
Honestly, I seriously hope its aliens. We zoom in once we get closer and discover structures that can only be described as a UFO base. While we're all astonished, we see one take off, it lands on the White House lawn and offers us all a free ride to the nearest star.
The article also gave me a chuckle - "after an errant cosmic ray". If that cosmic ray had behaved itself and gone where it was told we wouldn't have had any problems!