The M.mycoides genome contains over a million letters of genetic code and current DNA-technology can string-together perhaps a few thousand units in one go.

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Fox tackles the origins of the current thinking on the beginning of the universe starting way, way back with Plato, and moving her way through Ptolemy, the astronomical duo of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler (did you know that Brahe had his own castle for studying astronomy?), Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the current state of the Big Bang, String Theory, and alternative theories for the origins of the universe.

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Yet within current limits it's hard to know how long the string will stretch.

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