This is John Bachelor, a happy conversation with planetary geologist Ian Parmalow at Purdue University studying for his PhD, who is one of the people who have identified series an asteroid dwarf planet. He's in the asteroid belt but it's a dwarf planet.

Identified it as significant in that it has or has had an ocean, surface underground and that ocean is muddy, muddy ocean.

There's salt in it, there are lots of chemicals in it, but it suggests that it was

possibly a residue of the early solar system that needs to be studied. We have a deal of information

about it, but the ocean, if it was liquid at some point, it has a core of a series. Suggests again, as we're searching Europa

in the Jupiter system, this is a lot closer, series as Ian says.

It's looking for signs of fungi, animal, plant, living things.

How do you define an animal?

You consume something else. Living things consume something else to survive.

fungi do not, they're not part of the animal kingdom.

Ian Parmalo, Series, a dwarf planet with secrets.

More of this later tonight.

Any...

All I would say is that Series is very cool because it is the closest icy body to us.

It's in the asteroid belt and all the other icy bodies are at Jupiter or further out.

And what's also very mixed series very accessible as far as

spacecraft goes is that it doesn't have a massive gas giant that's that screws up

any orbital dynamics are trying to use.

It's very easy to, it is alone by itself basically

in the asteroid belt, so it's very easy to get to series,

making it a very nice sandbox to study icy bodies for us.