Even though it's in the main asteroid belt, Ceres is a dwarf planet. It probably formed beyond the frost line then migrated inward.
The boundary between the colder outer Solar System and the warmer inner Solar System is called the Frost Line. There are specific frost lines for different volatiles which freeze at different temperatures, but astrophysicists speak of a single frost line for simplicity. The frost line is close to Jupiter’s orbit now, but it hasn’t always been there. It’s moved as the Solar System evolved. The solar nebula was opaque in the early days, and the Sun’s warmth didn’t reach as far.
“In our article, we propose a scenario to explain why Ceres is so different from neighbouring asteroids. In this scenario, Ceres began forming in an orbit well beyond Saturn, where ammonia was abundant. During the giant planet growth stage, it was pulled into the asteroid belt as a migrant from the outer Solar System and survived for 4.5 billion years until now,” Ribeiro de Sousa said.
This figure from the study shows the four steps required to implant an object like Ceres into the asteroid belt. Image Credit: de Sousa et al. 2022.
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