China discovers 'unusually colored' moon goo


We had it all wrong, folks. The moon isn't made of cheese — it's made of goo.
Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 discovered an unidentified "gel-like" substance on "the far side of the moon" back in July, the state-run newspaper People's Daily and Newsweek report. People's Daily additionally described the extraterrestrial slime as being "unusually colored," but did not clarify what exactly that Lovecraftian statement meant. Intriguingly, Yu Tianyi, who works on the rover's drive team, confirmed to the Chinese-language website Our Space that the goo's color was "significantly different from the surrounding lunar soil."
Outside researchers that spoke with Space.com proposed that the gel-like substance could potentially be "melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon." People's Daily, though, was keeping an open mind, crowd-sourcing its followers on Twitter with the query, "What do you think it is?"
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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