Science News Roundup: Chinese sighting of 'cube' on moon rouses speculation, inspires memes; Japanese billionaire Maezawa blasts off into space and more

It belongs to a planetary class called "super-Jupiters" exceeding the mass of our solar system's largest planet. With lab help, whiskey distillers skip oak barrel-aging.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Chinese sighting of 'cube' on moon rouses speculation, inspires memes

A photograph of a cube-like object captured by a Chinese rover on the far side of the moon has fanned speculation over what it could be and inspired a host of memes by Chinese internet users. The Yutu-2 caught an image of what seems like a large cubic object on the horizon about 80 metres (87 yards) from its location, said Our Space, a Chinese government science website, citing the rover's last log on Dec. 3.

Japanese billionaire Maezawa blasts off into space

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa set out to became the first space tourist in more than a decade to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) when he blasted off on Wednesday, a voyage he sees as a dry run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023. The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan along with his assistant Yozo Hirano, who will document the journey, as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.

Mixing vaccines boosts immune response; experimental saliva test nearly as accurate as PCR

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Mixing vaccines boosts immune responses

Cycling-American rider Birch swapping velodrome for outer space

Eleven-time American national champion Christina Birch is swapping the cycling velodrome to start a journey she hopes will take her all the way to the moon. Birch's drastic change of direction comes after being selected for the NASA Astronaut Class of 2021, which will see her embark on a two-year training course for the Artemis missions in Houston, Texas.

Exclusive-Aleph, Wacker team up to fast-track mass lab meat production

Israeli lab-grown meat startup Aleph Farms and German chemicals maker Wacker Chemie will work together to improve production processes for growth proteins to remove one of the biggest obstacles to large-scale cultivated meat production. Cultivated meat, which is grown from animal muscle cells in a lab, has been getting a lot of attention as a way to address climate change by cutting energy, land and water use in the meat industry.

Alien 'super-Jupiter' breaks the mold on where planets can exist

One of the largest planets ever detected orbits at an enormous distance around two stars with a combined mass up to 10 times greater than our sun, an extreme celestial family that shatters assumptions about the type of places where planets can exist. The planet, located about 325 light years from Earth, is a gas giant apparently similar in composition to Jupiter but about 11 times more massive, researchers said on Wednesday. It belongs to a planetary class called "super-Jupiters" exceeding the mass of our solar system's largest planet.

With lab help, whiskey distillers skip oak barrel-aging. But how does it taste?

In a small lab in California’s Silicon Valley, Martin Janousek and Stu Aaron are making whiskey. There are no oak barrels stacked floor to ceiling. In fact, there’s hardly any wood at all. Instead, they use syringes, beakers and vials to find a more sustainable way to distill whiskey.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)