A new dwarf planet captured by NASA is "unlike anything humanity has seen before" claims the space agency.
Digital renders from NASA’s Dawn probe revealed a highly unusual mountain with "streaky" features on the enormous asteroid known as Ceres.
Located 400,000,000 kilometres from Earth, the space rock is so big it’s technically considered a dwarf planet, with scientists believing it formed about four billion years ago.
The rare mountain with "streaky" features is known as Ahuna Mons and was believed to have been created by a giant mud bubble.
"Ahuna Mons is like nothing that humanity has ever seen before," NASA wrote in a press release."For one thing, its slopes are garnished not with old craters but young vertical streaks.
"The new hypothesis [about its origins] holds that a bubble of mud rose from deep within the dwarf planet and pushed through the icy surface at a weak point rich in reflective salt – and then froze.
"The bright streaks are thought to be similar to other recently surfaced material such as visible in Ceres’ famous bright spots."
NASA said Ahuna Mons sits on the side of Ceres, with the mountain 16 kilometres wide and four kilometres high.
While NASA probe is effectively dead, the visualisations are based on data from information it captured between 2015 and 2018.
Carbon-based materials, similar to what may have helped create life on Earth, were also discovered at its surface, with the distant world now believed to contain “a much higher abundance of organics than originally thought".
