Astronomers have made some very interesting discoveries in space recently, each potentially bringing them one step closer to finding habitable exo-planets with signs of extra-terrestrial life-forms.

A study appearing this week in the journal Nature revealed findings extracted from the combined offerings of three NASA space telescopes: Hubble, Spitzer, and Kepler. Data from the telescopes showed clear skies and steamy water vapor on a gaseous planet outside our solar system.
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Of all the mammals currently living on this planet, the human race comes in a variety of diverse forms: a myriad of differing faces, skin colors, body shapes, eye colors, hair colors, heights and weight variations, but all undeniably "human."

All of these identifying features have, until very recently, been a product of evolution and the kaleidoscope of genetic diversity.
Historically, many varieties of hominid have existed, being defined by their most predominant capabilities and gradually evolving into more capable and advanced species: Homo habilis who had basic abilities; Homo erectus who could walk upright and homo sapiens who could think.
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As the infamous Ebola virus continues to spread across the African continent, world leaders are now sending aid in an attempt to stop the virus from escalating out of control.

But have they left it too late?

Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg thinks so. He told Germany’s Deutsche Welle that there is now little hope for the populations of Sierra Leone and Liberia and that the virus will only “burn itself out” when it has infected the entire population and killed five million people.

“The right time to get this epidemic under control in these countries has been missed,” said Schmidt-Chanasit. “That time was May and June. “Now it is too late.”read more

Astronomers continue in their quest to discover alien life forms in the cosmos, but naturalists suggest that they should look closer to home as there is still a host of undiscovered species lurking on our own planet.

This month a species that has defied classification for thirty years has finally been named by scientists, though they are still no further forward in determining what they are.

The weird species, described for the first time recently in the journal PLOS ONE, poses the question of how much we really know about life on this planet.
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