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Astronomers have speculated for decades that the giant waves that meander through the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, driving the weather, might also exist on the Sun. Now those waves have been unambiguously detected inside the Sun, and found to be very similar to those on Earth.

These Rossby waves, or planetary waves, naturally occur in rotating fluids. It is the rotation of the Earth that causes Rossby waves to propagate through the atmosphere and ocean, affecting the climate and weather.

The Sun rotates, too — so, theoretically at least, a similar phenomenon should be taking place in the gases and plasma that make up its layers. Indeed, it should be taking place in all rotating fluid systems.

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Space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s interest in exotic subjects was as obvious as his company logo. He’d spent years — and millions of dollars — on his own scientific study of UFOs and related topics. For the DIA contract, he created BAASS, a seperate entity housed within his aerospace plant. He hired a team of 46 scientists and investigators, along with dozens of other support personnel.

LAS VEGAS — UFO investigators are hoping to obtain a treasure trove of Pentagon documents that were generated by a once-secret military study of flying saucers and other weird aircraft.

The government confirms there was a UFO program. It supposedly ended in 2012, but the Pentagon has not yet released any reports or files.

The I-Team gives the first look at documents which prove the UFO study was real and was based in southern Nevada.

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A high-energy survey of the early Universe, an infrared observatory to study the formation of stars, planets and galaxies, and a Venus orbiter are to be considered for ESA’s fifth medium class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme, with a planned launch date in 2032.

The three candidates, the Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (Theseus), the SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (Spica), and the EnVision mission to Venus were selected from 25 proposals put forward by the scientific community.

Theseus, Spica and EnVision will be studied in parallel and a final decision is expected in 2021.

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The facility, which was originally used by the US military to spy on Soviet satellites during the Cold War, is undergoing a major overhaul to attract tourists and researchers alike. In search of inspiration, Snøhetta’s designers took astronomy classes and were captivated by the architecture of the galaxy.

“We learned about the eight shaped analemma diagram that the moon and the sun makes if you watch them from the same point over 365 days,” says Skaare. “We were especially inspired by the ‘ugly moons’ of Mars, with its funny shape,” she says referring Phobos and Deimos, the red-planet’s two lumpy satellites.

Mars’s lumpy-potato moons, in fact, inspired the shape of Solobservatoriet’s visitor cabins. Surrounding the planetarium are several imperfect-sphere rooms for stargazers who want to spend the an evening in the forest—perhaps to catch the spectacular Northern Lights. Designed to accommodate groups of two to 32, the cabins will be loosely scattered around the planetarium, by design.

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A landmark study has revealed that cholesterol in the brain may play a fundamental role in catalyzing the formation of amyloid beta clusters, thought to be a central mechanism leading to the devastating degenerative symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, set out to uncover what causes amyloid beta proteins to cluster into the plaques that slowly accumulate and cause the primary degenerative symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

“The levels of amyloid-beta normally found in the brain are about a thousand times lower than we require to observe it aggregating in the laboratory – so what happens in the brain to make it aggregate?” asks Michele Vendruscolo, lead on the new research.

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The eruption of Kilauea Volcano on the island of Hawaii triggered a number of gas- and lava-oozing fissures in the East Riff Zone of the volcano. The fissures and high levels of sulfur dioxide gas prompted evacuations in the area.

Images taken from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) onboard NASA’s Terra satellite picked up these new fissures. In the first image, the red areas are vegetation, and the black and gray areas are old lava flows. The yellow areas superimposed over the image show hot spots that were detected by ASTER’s thermal infrared bands. These hot spots are the newly formed fissures and new lava flow as of May 6. In the second photo, also acquired on May 6, the long yellow and green streaks are plumes of sulfur dioxide gas.

On April 30, the floor of Kilauea’s crater began to collapse. Earthquakes followed, including one that measured magnitude 6.9, and lava was pushed into new underground areas that eventually broke through the ground in such areas as the Leilani Estates.

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Summary: A new study sheds light on how the cerebellum is able to make predictions and learn from mistakes, especially when it comes to completing complex motor actions. The findings could help in the development of new machine learning technologies.

Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine.

In studies with monkeys, Johns Hopkins researchers report that they have uncovered significant new details about how the cerebellum — the “learning machine” of the mammalian brain — makes predictions and learns from its mistakes, helping us execute complex motor actions such as accurately shooting a basketball into a net or focusing your eyes on an object across the room.

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