End of mystery? “Cube” on the far side of the Moon is probably just a rock

The strange structure present in an image of the far side of the moon it is probably a simple rock that appeared to be a cube due to the low resolution of the image. At least that’s what Philip Stooke, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, said of a photo taken last month by the Chinese Yutu-2 rover, which now moves to the object to study it further.

The photo was taken while the rover explored the Von Kárman crater, and showed the mysterious structure approximately 80 m away from where the rover was. At the time, the image was released by Our Space, a science communication channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The publication jokingly described a “mysterious hut”, also asking if it would be “a house built by aliens after falling on the moon”.

For the professor, the structure in the photo is nothing more than a rock on the edge of a crater — that is, something unrelated to extraterrestrial beings. “The Chinese media are very eager to find all kinds of weird stuff on the moon,” he explained. Stooke noted that, for this reason, it is common to see publications from the country showing a sensationalist air, mentioning possible installations of beings from other worlds, priceless metals and even unknown substances.

Recently, an episode occurred involving exactly something like this: in 2019, the country announced that the Yutu-2 rover had found a colored substance, like a gel, also on the far side of the Moon. It was only last year that an article was published clarifying that the substance was, in fact, made of rock.

Stooke recalled this occurrence and was not surprised by the speculations about the (unlikely) relationship with alien life that this image paid off, but underscored expectations about what the Yutu-2 rover might discover when it catches up. “Scientifically speaking, the rock could be interesting, and I hope it, or others around it, will be studied in detail when they reach it in 2022.” But he already said: “the rock will not look like a hut”.

Source: Space.com

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