The article is based on a scientific paper linked at the bottom of the article.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 12918.html
They did not actually discover water vapor per se, but rather hydroxyl (OH) and they assume that it is the product of the photodissociation of H2O.
The presence of water vapour around Ceres was suggested by a marginal detection of the photodissociation product of water, hydroxyl (ref. 12), but could not be confirmed by later, more sensitive observations13. Here we report the detection of water vapour around Ceres, with at least 1026 molecules being produced per second, originating from localized sources that seem to be linked to mid-latitude regions on the surface14, 15. The water evaporation could be due to comet-like sublimation or to cryo-volcanism, in which volcanoes erupt volatiles such as water instead of molten rocks.
I do not even know if that process could take place at the distance of the asteroid belt, being quite far from the Sun. The EU model has an alternative explanation for the presence of hydroxyl in comet comas. I suspect this applies to Ceres too.
And the thought of volcanoes on what is basically a large rock seems to defy all the mainstream models for the formation of the solar system and it's history. Would not Ceres have become inactive a long time ago if it were formed (as we are told) billions of years ago? After all it is in an orbit between Jupiter and Mars and it is pretty cold and dark out there, between perihelion of 2.5 AU and aphelion of 3 AU.
The difference between aphelion and perihelion is approximately 63 million km.
I suspect that what we are seeing on Ceres is the same process that occurs on comets.
See:
Deep Impact: Where's The Water?
Plasma events are scalable. What occurs in the plasma laboratory can occur on a vastly larger scale in space plasma. Hence, observations of plasma behavior in the laboratory are a logical reference when considering the mysteries of cometary comas—and that includes the many enigmas that surround the identification of “water” in the comas. According to the electric theorists, electricity can accomplish the very things that have baffled the cometologists.
In their analysis of the coma, astronomers begin with the assumption that water is evaporating in the heat of the Sun, off the surface ices of the nucleus. They do not “see” the water, but call upon the effects of solar radiation (photolysis) on assumed “water” to account for the abundant hydroxyl radical OH (oxygen-hydrogen molecules) in the coma.
In our previous Picture of the Day we noted another possibility. Astronomers have not considered the energetic ionic chemical reactions that would accompany plasma discharge “sputtering” of a cathode or negatively charged object in space. Production of OH would be virtually certain if proton streams sputtered material from the surface in the fashion that the electric theorists have claimed
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Ceres seems to be further blurring the distinction between comets and asteroids. Of course, in the Electric Universe model the word "comet" does not describe a specific type of object, but rather is a description of an electrical condition that could apply to ANY TYPE of celestial object.