SoT 127: There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

Published: Dec. 8, 2013, 4:54 a.m.

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Launch of the MAVEN probe to Mars, to investigate what happened to the red planet\'s atmosphere.

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Richard Lenski\'s long-term evolution experiment shows no sign of stopping. One of the longest continously-running scientific experiments demonstrates that bacteria evolves and at an increasing rate.

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The \'clean-rooms\' where spacecraft are built are \\xa0the most sterile places we can make. But a new species of bacteria has been found in two such clean-rooms - not exactly thriving, but not dead either...

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It\'s well established that modern dogs are an evolutionary off-shoot of wolves, but there\'s a lot of debate about when and where they branched off. With theories suggesting China, Europe and the Middle East as being the sites of the separation, it\'s an ongoing question.

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