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Scientists Find Youngest Planet Ever Observed

Astronomers have come across the youngest planet ever observed, at just 2 million years old. It's called LkCa 15 b, and it's still in the early stages of forming. Melissa Block talks to Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy about the discovery.
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Did Giant Stars Feed Blue Stragglers?

In a letter to the journal Nature published this week, astronomers Aaron Geller and Robert Mathieu offer an explanation for the origin of blue straggler stars in a star cluster called NGC 188. Geller suggests the stars fed on neighbor stars, leaving behind white dwarfs.
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Science Diction: The Origin Of 'Bunsen Burner'

Every high school chemist has no doubt fiddled with a Bunsen burner--but where did the apparatus get its name? Science historian Howard Markel talks about the German chemist Robert Bunsen, and why his experiments necessitated the invention of the gas burner still in use today.
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Reinventing Fire: Getting Beyond Fossil Fuels

In his bookReinventing Fire, Amory Lovins lays out his blueprint for freeing society of its addiction to fossil fuels, by saving energy with more efficient vehicles, buildings and manufacturing plants, and producing it with renewable options like windmills and rooftop solar.
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Predicting When Space Junk Will Come Home To Earth

This weekend, a defunct German satellite is scheduled to crash to Earth, just a month after a NASA satellite did the same. NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney and Phil Plait, author of the Bad Astronomy blog, discuss whether engineers on Earth have any say when--or where--objects fall.
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Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed'

In a new book writer Debbie Nathan digs into archived material documenting the experiences of a patient known as "Sybil," who reportedly suffered from multiple personality disorder. Ira Flatow and guests discuss MPD, and its modern equivalent--dissociative identity disorder.
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'Living Fossils' Just A Branch On Cycad Family Tree

Though dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, there are still thought to be a few species left over from those days. Plants called cycads, the so-called "living fossils," have remained mostly unchanged for 300 million years. But a new study suggests that glamorous title may not be deserved.
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What Slew An Ancient Mastodon? DNA Tells Tale

CT scans and new DNA technology indicate that a bone sharpened into a spear was used to kill a mastodon in the northwestern U.S. 13,800 years ago. The research revisits an old debate about the evidence for an early hunt in North America.

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