Ceres is a body roughly 600 miles in diameter. It is the largest of a swarm of objects that orbit between Mars and Jupiter. It may have water ice, and a water ocean under the surface. And, according to scientist John Houtkopper, it may be the ultimate home of life on Earth.
Houtkopper suggests life may have developed on Ceres early in the history of the Solar System and migrated to Earth in a chunk that somehow broke off Ceres and escaped the dwarf planet's weak gravity. This is the latest version of an old theory that holds life came to Earth from somewhere else-- Mars, Venus, a comet, or another star system.
It's sort of the search for the Holy Grail for a certain group of scientists. Of course, the upshot of the basic theory keeps the origin of life a mystery by pushing that event beyond the reach of humanity, at least at present. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is scheduled to encounter Ceres in 2015. At that time, science should learn more about Ceres than it has since Ceres' discovery in 1801.
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