• When humans spend time in space, they lose a ton of muscle mass because there's no gravity -- sometimes as much as 40 percent of muscle mass over 180 days.
  • A new study will use Caenorhabditis elegans, which cannot be seen by the human eye, to study muscle loss. Scientists will allow the worms to live and reproduce for five and a half days before freezing them and sending them back to earth for study.
  • The experiment is being led by Dr. Timothy Etheridge, a professor at the University of Exeter, and is being backed by the UK Space Agency. The project should get started in 2017.

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