12:21 22 June 2016
Internet conspiracy theorists are convinced that alien colonies exist on the dwarf planet of Ceres, which has become famous for the mysterious bright spots that are visible on its surface.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured the bizarre blinking lights that were also observed in a spectrograph taken by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Searchers (HARPS) at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Several UFO hunters and space watchers have since considered this an evidence of alien life.
In a YouTube video entitled “Dramatic Proof of Life on Ceres”, one said: "This is alien life on another planet, they're showing us they exist,"
Another one wrote: "Some UFO enthusiasts speculate that it is a signal. It could be a warning signal, a radar tower, or a greeting signal.”
"Some members of the UFO community think that alien colonists created the bright spots on the dwarf planet."
Meanwhile, a pair of studies published in respected science journal Nature, suggested that the glow is caused by light reflecting off salty ice.
"The global nature of Ceres' bright spots suggests that this world has a subsurface layer that contains briny water-ice," said Andreas Nathues at Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany.