<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I would think that the water would be vaporized in any collision, and with no gravitationally large object around it would dissapate in the interplanetary space, though some might be captured by nearby bodies<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />yes, it would seem that we can imagine a direct hit on a sizable planet / planetoid that would vaporize all the water<br /><br />however i read an article recently on simulations done of planetary collisions. one of the main conclusions was, that it seemed the majority of collisions (especially in early planetary system formation) would be 'glancing blows':<br /><br />that the majority would rather shear off large amounts of mass from the smaller body, than they would vaporize the matter<br /><br />i wish i could find it .. there was a nice animation<br /><br />anyway in this case, the body that could have produced ceres would have been a smaller body "sheared" apart by the larger mass / gravitation of the larger body ..<br /><br />hence (possible?) that large quantities of water suddenly released into space, some of which could have relatively quickly formed a spherical shape and frozen.<br /><br />hence ceres. <br /><br />if there were other spherical frozen remains of varying sizes, they may still be there undiscovered .. or may have been further destroyed / assimilated in collisions<br /><br />also speculation on my part, but plausible. unless someone can think of a physics-based reason why this is not possible.<br /><br />.<br />