As Stratolaunch Systems Corp. has rolled its super-massive aircraft out of the hangar during the last year and performed some ground-based tests, there has been one big unanswered question—what is the purpose of building the largest airplane in the world?
Source: arstechnica.com
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For decades, descriptions of viruses have straddled life and nonlife, a divide that usually isn’t difficult to navigate. Their hallmark characteristics, namely their small size, tiny genomes and parasitic dependence on cellular hosts for replication, set them apart from all other living things despite their animation. But that story has gotten far more puzzling — particularly since the discovery of the first giant virus in 2003, which was so large that researchers initially thought it was a bacterium.
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