Virgin Galactic's first space tourism flight took off this week. Here are the players taking civilians to space.

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Virgin Galactic flight
Virgin Galactic's second commercial flight took off this week. Space tourists can pay $450,000 for a seat on one of the company's flights.

Virgin Galactic

You probably think people are getting ruder and less nice than they were in the past. You're also probably wrong.

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airport delays
Travelers line up to check in for United Airlines flights at San Francisco International Airport on July 01, 2022 in San Francisco, California.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Egyptian scientists discovered a diminutive 41-million year old whale and named it after King Tut

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A bottlenose dolphin pictured in the Moray Firth, Scotland.
A bottlenose dolphin pictured in the Moray Firth, Scotland.

Getty Images

Scientists found a new sea creature with 20 'arms' and named it after a strawberry

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Promachocrinus Feather Star
A preserved Antarctic strawberry feather star, or Promachocrinus fragarius.

Courtesy Greg W. Rouse

For over 20 years, archaeologists in Germany thought a 35,000-year-old figurine they found was a horse. Now, they aren't sure whether or not it's a cave lion or cave bear.

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A small brown ivory figurine shaped like a bear or a lion in front of a black background
The Hohle Fels animal figure from left front

Ria Litzenberg, University of Tübingen

Humans have pumped so much groundwater from the Earth that it's actually caused the planet's axis to shift, a new study found

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Earth from space.
We're moving so much water from under the continents to the oceans that it's affecting our axial tilt, a new study found.

DrPixel / Getty Images

Congress's UFO hearing shows the hardest part of discovering alien life may be announcing it. Here's how NASA might break the news.

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earth with bright spot lightning strike with starry milky way purple and black above and solar panels of space station in foreground
A time-lapse of the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from the International Space Station.

NASA/Kjell Lindgren

Virgin Galactic's first space tourism passengers only spent a few minutes floating weightless above the Earth, and their experience still mirrored other astronauts' in 3 key ways

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Virgin Galactic passengers in space.
Anastatia Mayers, one of the youngest person to ever travel to space, onboard Virgin Galactic's flight.

Virgin Galactic

9 useless body parts that humans no longer need

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Doctor and patient

Shutterstock

The US government will hand out up to $1.2 billion for companies to suck greenhouse gases out of the air

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close-up of smoke stacks
Vapor rises from cooling towers in this stock image.

Chris Ratcliffe, Bloomberg/Getty Images

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