Marrying Your Cousin: Is It Actually As Bad As We Thought?
Marrying your cousin has long been considered taboo, but new research says that procreating with your cousins may not be as risky as previously thought. Popular Science's Eleanor Cummins breaks down the findings.
Eleanor Cummins, Editorial Assistant at Popular Science, breaks down the findings. Columbia University data scientist Yaniv Erlich studied a family tree of 13 million people to see how marrying various relatives impacts the risk of genetic birth defects. He found that one set of first cousins having children doesn't necessarily pose a high risk of having children with birth defects, but if the trend continues beyond one generation, then the risk increases exponentially.
British officials and space scientists said Tuesday they were disappointed but not deterred after the first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from the U.K. ended in failure.
The small coastal town of Montecito, California -- home to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and Rob Lowe -- has been evacuated as a result of extensive flooding in the area and surrounding canyons after more than eight inches of rain fell in just 12 hours on Monday.
Virgin Orbit's "Cosmic Girl," a retrofitted Boeing 747 plane, is scheduled for a horizontal launch into orbit Monday night from the United Kingdom's Spaceport Cornwall.
