David Cyranoski (1 December, 2017) 1 reported in Nature (news) that "Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus-and suggests new outbreak could occur", based on a paper (30 November, 2017) 2 of some Chinese scientists in PLoS Pathogens. However, I don't agree with their conclusion that Yunnan bat is the culprit of SARS-CoV duo to their many doubtful points, logic errors and disregarding some existing evidences.
We have to face an important and urgent problem: even though according to spectral detection, we cannot conclude that there is much water on the Moon as the prevailing theory claims. We might have overlooked the widespread presence of lunar methanol. M 3 is unable to distinguish between hydroxyl radicals from water and hydroxyl groups from methanol because the absorption strengths of the two are all 2.9 μm, and there are no established methods to distinguish them using the 2.9 μm band. The so-called surficial water illogically appeared at lunar equator, seriously shaking the credibility of M 3 spectra data analysis. The vast quantities of hydrogen found in lunar polar craters should be hydrogen ice, which easy to confuse with water ice. The author has also made a preliminary study of the physical / chemical process chains on lunar surface.
This literature review found that it is doubtful that there is water ice in the polar craters on the Moon. In the course of this review, the following findings were found: (1) The absorption strength of hydroxyl radicals and hydroxyl groups are all 2.9μm, so it is easy to confuse hydroxyl radicals and hydroxyl groups when interpreting M3 spectra data. I do not doubt the ability of LCROSS to detect OH from water, but only suspect that LCROSS is unable to distinguish between hydroxyl radicals from water ice and hydroxyl groups from Moon's methanol due to ignore their spectral identity; (2) The water brought by comets and asteroids and the one caused by solar wind has been exhausted by reacts with the widespread methanol on the Moon in the presence of Pt/α-MoC or Pt/C catalysts. These reacts form large amount of hydrogen, thus clarifying a question NASA raised that "Scientists have long speculated about the source of vast quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles"; (3) The vast quantities of hydrogen in lunar polar craters at extremely low temperatures might be in liquid or solid state now, easy to confuse with water ice. It seems that all our previous misconceptions about water ice in the lunar polar craters might be due to the neglect of the widespread chemical role of lunar methanol. It is necessary to conduct in-depth research in this field in the future.
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