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In response to: China’s Yutu 2 rover has been crawling across the moon’s surface for almost three years. Since landing in the Von Kármán crater on January 3, 2019, it has finally made an interesting discovery. On December 3rd, the rover spotted a cube-shaped object on the horizon. Yutu 2 logged the strange entity in its driving diary, referring to it as a mystery moon hut.

According to Our Space, a Chinese media channel affiliated with the Chinese National Space Administration, the moon hut was spotted in a series of moon photos taken by China’s Yutu 2. As expected, the team behind the exploration will want to get a close look at the object and are driving toward it. The rover is currently about 262 feet (80 meters) away and is expected to reach the site in about two or three lunar days – or two or three Earth months.

It’s worth noting that the term “mystery hut” (or for us, moon hut) is just a placeholder name based on the object’s appearance. It’s not actually a hut or house. Possible theories about the object’s true origin are based on science and not on an episode of X-Files. The most logical explanation is that it could be a large boulder that was excavated by an impact event on the moon.

While this moon hut may turn out to be nothing more than a basic moon rock, China’s latest discovery comes as the country has been accelerating its space program. China launched a three-person crew for a six-month mission aboard its own space station in October. They aim to set a new record for the length of time spent in space by Chinese astronauts. The country also successfully landed a solar-powered rover on Mars earlier this year.

Although the mystery moon hut is causing a lot of online buzz, Philip Stooke, a research professor in the Department of Geography and Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at the University of Western Ontario dismissed the find with one sweeping statement. Speaking to Inside Outer Space (via Space.com) he said the object is just a rock on a crater rim north of the rover’s last parking location.

The professor’s dismissive statement might be disheartening to those who are intrigued by the moon hut discovery. But based on previous moon explorations it probably is just a large boulder. While giant block-shaped moon rocks aren’t that common, its specific shape might be due to the low resolution of the image. Only better photos taken from a closer range will reveal the object’s true form. The rock is also visible in imagery snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). However, if it does turn out to be something unnatural, like an artifact, it would be a game-changer for space exploration.

In recent times scientists have started to take the search for ancient relics of alien civilizations more seriously. These artifacts could be found on the moon, on Mars, or in any number of places in the solar system. So the next time you look at the night sky, wondering if the truth is out there – remember dedicated teams are trying to answer that question too.

In response to:

America’s COVID-19 testing has stalled, and that’s a big problem

We'll need a lot more testing capacity to get the coronavirus under control.

Timothy B. Lee - 4/2/2020, 5:09 PM



One of America's biggest fumbles in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis was inadequate testing. Thanks to a series of poor decisions by federal officials, the United States had far too little capacity to test for COVID-19 throughout the month of February, hampering our ability to contain the spread of the virus.

America is finally testing for coronavirus in significant volumes

In early March, things seemed to be turning around. According to data from COVID Tracking Project, daily testing grew exponentially from a few hundred tests on March 5 to 107,000 tests last Friday, March 27.

But since then, progress has stalled. The US has been testing a bit over 100,000 people a day for the last six days—including 101,000 yesterday. And that's a cause for concern because the US will need to do considerably more testing to get its coronavirus outbreak under control.

Why testing matters

The most urgent need for testing is when a patient shows up at the hospital with coronavirus symptoms. Knowing if a patient actually has coronavirus or some other disease with similar symptoms determines what kinds of treatment are most appropriate. It also lets health care workers know whether they need to take precautions to avoid catching the coronavirus themselves.

Testing is also crucial for slowing the spread of coronavirus in the wider world. Ideally, when a patient is diagnosed with COVID-19, health officials would test everyone who has had close contact with that person. If someone else tested positive, officials would test all of their close contacts too. This process is known as contact tracing. Doing it on a wide-enough scale should allow officials to quickly identify and isolate almost everyone who has the disease.

You might not think that would matter now with so many people staying at home. But there are a fair number of people still working in essential industries who are at risk for catching COVID-19.

Amazon, for example, has had coronavirus cases at a growing number of fulfillment centers around the country. When these outbreaks occur, Amazon typically orders co-workers known to have had close contact to self-quarantine for 14 days. But those workers aren't necessarily tested. So if one of them passed COVID-19 on to someone else before their quarantine began, public officials wouldn't find out.
When to go back to work

So greater testing capacity would help improve treatment of patients and limit the spread of the coronavirus today. And it will become even more important once the current outbreak has peaked and public officials want to start sending people back to work.

If officials simply lifted quarantine restrictions without taking other precautions, the virus would resume its exponential growth and we'd wind up with a second large-scale outbreak. Aggressive contact tracing and quarantine policies are needed to make sure this doesn't happen. And that requires ample testing capacity.

Large-scale testing can also inform public officials' decision about when and how to lift restrictions. That's important because today's large-scale quarantine policy is having massive economic costs. The more data officials have about the spread of the coronavirus, the more precisely they can determine when and where it's safe to relax restrictions and the sooner they can let people go back to work.

Current testing levels aren’t enough

The countries that have been most successful at controlling their coronavirus outbreaks have done a lot more testing than the United States on a per capita basis.