'Mystery hut' on the moon just the latest weird lunar find by China's Yutu 2 rover - Space.com | Canada News Media
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'Mystery hut' on the moon just the latest weird lunar find by China's Yutu 2 rover – Space.com

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China’s Yutu 2 rover is the first spacecraft to explore the surface of the moon’s far side, and the wheeled robot has made some interesting discoveries during its historic journey. 

Yutu 2 landed in Von Kármán crater atop the Chang’e 4 lander in January 2019 and has been working its way northwest during each 14.5-Earth-day-long lunar day ever since, using its four science payloads to image and analyze its surroundings as it goes.

The solar-powered rover recently spotted a weirdly cube-shaped ‘mystery hut’ on its horizon that has generated quite a bit of media buzz, despite most likely being just a rock. But other findings have also drawn attention over the past couple of years.

Photos: Here’s what China’s Yutu 2 rover found on far side of the moon

A zoomed-in closer look at a cube shape spotted by China’s Yutu 2 rover on the far side of the moon. (Image credit: CNSA/Our Space)

‘Gel-like’ moon discovery and rocks

Yutu 2 discovered an object in the middle of a small crater that was initially described by Our Space — a Chinese-language science outreach channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration — by the term “胶状物” (“jiao zhuang wu”), which can be translated as “gel-like.” There was no accompanying image.

Outside scientists suspected the substance was glassy material created by an impact, and that turned out to be correct. A recent paper in the journal Nature authored by Chinese scientists reported that the material was likely from a meteorite strike on the moon less than one million years ago.

China’s Yutu 2 moon rover captured this image of glassy material from the edge of a small crater. (Image credit: © CNSA/CLEP )

Yutu 2 rover and the ‘milestone’ rock

Another discovery was a number of shards of rock sticking out of the surface, referred to by Our Space as a “milestone.” Once again, a meteor impact is the likely culprit. 

While seemingly mundane, such rocks stand out on a surface that has been pulverized over billions of years by both micrometeorites and harsh solar radiation. When Yutu 2 discovers sizable rocks, they’re generally indicators of impact activity. Such rocks provide clues about the history of the moon and the composition of material excavated or ejected by impactors, as was the case with a set of relatively young rocks discovered in early 2020.

This photo taken by China’s Yutu 2 moon rover shows the elongated “milestone” rock on the lunar surface. (Image credit: CNSA)

Yutu 2 has also been peeking beneath the lunar surface, using its ground-penetrating radar to build an image of layers beneath the rover by collecting reflected electromagnetic waves. Yutu 2 detected three distinct layers in the near subsurface, suggesting that separate, large impact events had delivered ejecta into the region.

The fuzzy image of the “mystery hut” left some people wondering about the quality of Yutu 2’s photographic gear. However, the rover’s pair of panoramic cameras have returned a huge batch of impressive images from the lunar far side.

The lunar far side never faces Earth; it was not seen until the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 spacecraft traveled around the moon in 1959. Chang’e 4 and Yutu 2 therefore cannot beam data directly to Earth and are supported by a relay satellite beyond the moon, which facilitates communications between the spacecraft and its handlers. The relay satellite, known as Queqiao, also collects some data of its own, using a pioneering low-frequency astronomy instrument.

The Yutu 2 rover, as seen shortly after touchdown by the Chang’e 4 lander. (Image credit: CNSA)

Related stories:

So far, Yutu 2 and its Chang’e 4 lander have been active for over 1,000 (Earth) days on the far side of the moon. Yutu 2 has set a new longevity record for a rover working on the lunar surface, surpassing the previous record of 321 days set by the Soviet Union’s robotic Lunokhod 1 rover.

Yutu 2 and Chang’e 4 are currently in their 37th lunar day (each of which is around 29.5 Earth days). The two solar-powered spacecraft hibernate during the two-week-long lunar nights, when the temperature plummets as low as minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 190 degrees Celsius).

The image of the “mystery hut” was taken during lunar day 36, in November 2021. It’s possible that the China Lunar Exploration Program will release new images in the weeks following the end of lunar day 37, which will come on the evening of Dec. 10. Yutu 2 travels an average of roughly 66 feet to 98 feet (20 to 30 meters) per lunar day, meaning the rover is expected to cover the approximately 260 feet (80 m) to the object by lunar day 38 or 39.

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Here’s how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South

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More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.

That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”

The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.

Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.

Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.

Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”

The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.

North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.

Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”

Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.

Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.

For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.

“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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‘Big Sam’: Paleontologists unearth giant skull of Pachyrhinosaurus in Alberta

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It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.

On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.

They call it “Big Sam.”

The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

It didn’t die alone.

“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.

She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”

“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.

The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.

The discovery was a long time coming.

The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.

“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.

When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”

“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.

Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.

About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.

Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.

“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.

“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”

The genders of the two adults are unknown.

Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.

The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.

She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.

“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.

“It’s pretty exciting.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.

Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.

Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.

The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.

The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.

It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.

Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.

Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.

Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.

Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.

The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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