It's life Jim, but not as we know it.
Liquid water and carbon are both considered essential ingredients for the creation of life as we understand it
FTFY
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Ceres contains more carbon-based compounds - the chemical building blocks for life - than previously thought, according to a new study. Last year, scientists discovered that not only was Ceres’ surface peppered with patches of organic material, but that it is rich in water ice and its crust contains ice, salts and hydrated …
Also: "a sign that [an?] it may have harbored an ancient ocean in its past."
Doesn't really sound plausible, notwithstanding JPL/NASA's speculations, nor its relatively high density; at just ~960 km (~600 miles) diameter Ceres' gravity is just 0.029 g (0.28 m/s2) and with no protection from radiation whatsoever (Ceres has had no magnetosphere) any liquid water on the surface would have been disassociated rather quickly.
null examples are not an argument. Only carbon based life is known, Sample size of 1. Look up the number of compounds carbon can make versus _any_ other element. Oder of magnitude difference. I wont even start on the huge gap between simple carbon compounds and the simplest protein.
>>Ceres will likely require future missions that can analyze or return samples.<<
Mission to analyze yes ASAP - Possibly a massive impact on Drake calculations.
I'm not too keen on the 'return' part if this does turn out to be even close to biological in nature. Setting up Ceres as a quarantined zone and running a very very long term study in situ into these compounds interaction with earth biology would be the next step, robots on Ceres, people in orbiting station, no return traffic from Ceres.
And can we look for these same organics using the bio-lab on Curiosity?
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Scoff all you want, the remaining microbes on Ceres will lead to unexpected profits. I need $500 million to test my 5 tonne lander bringing back Lunar samples, then it's on. It being research on every hunk of rock with equal or lower gravity than Ceres, meaning almost everywhere humans can go with current technology, including Psyche 16.