UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

The Most Amazing Space Stories This Week! — **Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last human to set foot on the moon, seen on the lunar surface in December 1972. Cernan passed away on Jan. 16, 2016.**
**Credit: NASA**

The last human to walk on the moon died. A first-time astronaut shared his first-ever spacewalk with the world. The U.S. got a new president, leaving experts to contemplate the future of space policy. 2016 set a record for global temperatures. And scientists found ice spikes on Pluto and a meteorite on Mars. Here are our picks for the best and most important space stories of the week.

Rest in peace, moonwalker

Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last human to set foot on the moon, passed away on Jan. 14. He was 82. Cernan's friends and colleagues have been memorializing his life and legacy this week. [Full Story: Apollo Astronaut Eugene Cernan, Last Man to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 82]

Trump and NASA

Donald J. Trump, who was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States Friday (Jan. 20), may have to make some big decisions regarding NASA programs. Here are six things to know about the new administration's relationship with and plans for the nation's space agency. [Full Story: 6 Things to Know About Trump and NASA]

It's getting hot in here

2016 was officially the hottest year on record, and human activity is to blame for the rise in temperatures, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the third consecutive year to reach record temperature highs. NASA's Earth Science program assisted NOAA in measuring the year's global temperatures.[Full Story: 2016 Was Earth's Hottest Year on Record, and Humans Are to Blame]

This rock's not from around here

**NASA's Mars rover Curiosity found a rock that might have fallen from space. This photo shows the likely meteorite, known as "Ames Knob," on the surface of Mars on Jan. 12, 2017.**
**Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS**

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has been a busy little bot of late. NASA released a photo from the rover showing shallow crevices in the Martian soil, perhaps formed from ancient mud cracks, indicating the presence of water. Curiosity also recently spotted a rock on the Red Planet's surface that likely fell from space. The gray, iron-nickel meteorite, dubbed Ames Knob, looks distinctly different from the typical red-hued Martian rocks. It is not the first meteorite that Curiosity has identified on the Martian surface. If the rock hit the planet long ago, scientists could use the meteorite to learn something about the ancient Martian surface. [Full Story: Weird Mars Rock Spied by Curiosity Rover Is Probably a Meteorite]

Ice spikes spotted on Pluto

Scientists think they've found evidence of naturally forming, spiked columns of ice and snow called "penitentes" on Pluto's surface. On Earth, these features can grow to be several feet high; they form at high altitudes where ice can transform directly into vapor. If Pluto has these features, it's likely that they also exist on other icy worlds in the solar system. [Full Story: Prickly Pluto Could Reveal Ice Spikes Are Common on Other Worlds]

The cost of a perfect solar storm

If a perfect solar storm were to hit the United States and knock out major power grids, it could create an economic loss of $42 billion per day, according to a new study. Solar storms are ejections of charged particles from the sun, and space experts have warned federal agencies of these storms' potentially devastating impacts on power grids and satellite communications. [Solar Storm Blackout Could Cost the US $42 Billion Per Day]

A photogenic spacewalk

**European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped a series of awesome space selfies during his first spacewalk, on Jan. 13, 2017**
**Credit: ESA/NASA**

First-time astronaut and Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, who is currently living on the International Space Station, recently completed a 6-hour spacewalk. Pesquet is proving to be quite the space photographer; he snapped several photos while he was outside the station, including some spectacular self-portraits. [Full Story: Astronaut's First Spacewalk Photos Are Out of This World!]

Space traffic jams

Experts on spaceflight and space-based technologies say the federal government needs to act now to address the growing issue of space traffic. As more and more countries and private companies launch objects into orbit, the problem of space traffic grows larger, and experts fear governments aren't adapting quickly enough. [Full Story: Many Questions, Few Answers When it Comes to Space Traffic Management, Experts Say]

Mirror, mirror

The Giant Magellan Telescope will peer deep into the cosmos using the largest single-piece mirrors ever made. Each mirror takes years to complete, and even microscopic errors could sabotage the entire instrument. [Full Story: Making the Giant Magellan Telescope's Massive, Incredibly Precise Mirrors]

Waiting to boldly go …

The much-anticipated new television show that will take place in the "Star Trek" universe seems to have been delayed again. "Star Trek: Discovery" was initially scheduled to debut this month, but that date was pushed to May. Now, network executives say the debut date is "flexible," and that production is set to begin before February. [Full Story: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Delayed, Classic Character Re-Cast]

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Alone in the Universe…..Yeah right!

Astronomers at the University of Auckland claim that there are actually around 100 BILLION habitable, Earth-like planets in the Milky Way — significantly more than the previous estimate of around 17 billion. There are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning there is somewhere in the region of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets. I’ll leave you to do the math on whether one of those 50 sextillion planets has the right conditions for nurturing alien life or not.

The previous figure of 17 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way came from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in January, which analysed data from the Kepler space observatory. Kepler essentially measures the dimming (apparent magnitude) of stars as planets transit in front of them — the more a star dims, the larger the planet. Through repeated observations we can work out the planet’s orbital period, from which we can usually derive the orbital distance and surface temperature. According to Phil Yock from the University of Auckland, Kepler’s technique generally finds “Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars,” and are therefore “generally hotter than Earth [and not habitable].”

The University of Auckland’s technique, called gravitational microlensing, instead measures the number of Earth-size planets that orbit at twice the Sun-Earth distance. This results in a list of planets that are generally cooler than Earth — but by interpolating between this new list, and Kepler’s list, the Kiwi astronomers hope to generate a more accurate list of habitable, Earth-like planets. “We anticipate a number in the order of 100 billion,” says Yock.

Gravitational microlensing, an effect theorized by Einstein back in 1936, is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially, light emitted by a star is bent by the gravity of massive objects, ultimately allowing astronomers to work out just how large those objects are. Gravitational microlensing has been used in recent years to detect planets the size of Neptune or Jupiter, and now Yock his colleagues at the University of Auckland have proposed a new method for detecting Earth-sized planets. The astronomers hope to use this new microlensing technique with a huge suite of telescopes — located in Chile, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Texas — to confirm their estimate of 100 billion Earth-like habitable planets.

Suffice it to say, if the Milky Way contains 100 billion Earth-like planets, and there’s somewhere in the region of 500 billion galaxies, then there’s an extremely high chance of other planets harbouring life. As for how we’ll get to those planets, though — or, alternatively, how the residents of those planets will get to us — remains a very big question. The nearest probably-habitable planet is Tau Ceti e, which is 11.9 light years from Earth. The fastest spacecraft ever, Helios II, traveled at 43 miles per second (70km/s), or 0.000234c (the speed of light). At that speed it would take 51,000 years for a spacecraft to reach Tau Ceti e.

It gets worse: Helios II was only travelling that fast because it was orbiting close to the Sun; Voyager, for example, travels at just 8 miles per second (so, about 200,000 years to reach Tau Ceti e). To reach another star within a reasonable time period (say, 50-100 years) we would need a propulsion system that’s capable of around 0.1c (10% light speed). There are a few proposed methods for reaching such insane speeds (antimatter rockets, fusion rockets), but nothing that’s being immediately (and seriously) considered for interstellar travel. Who knows, maybe NASA’s warp drive will pan out? If they can work out the whole annihilating-the-star-system-upon-arrival issue, that is…

[The image at the top of the story is an infrared image of the core of the Milky Way, captured by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope. Infrared imaging allows you to see many stars which are normally obscured by intergalactic dust.]

UIP Summary

I remember as a child always being led to believe that we are alone in the vastness of the Universe and that we are all just some kind of a ‘miracle’ and out there in the darkness of space is just lots of dying stars and planets! How VERY wrong were they….The Galaxy we live in is infested with life! Out of a 100 Billion habitable planets there is going to be a lot of other planets out there that are inhabited, much like planet earth, but perhaps some far more sophisticated.

With all of these Scientists coming out with such amazing news such as this, it really does make me thing that perhaps this is part of the drip feeding of disclosure like everything else we have been presented with in the last few years! So that in the near future our so called world leaders can say “hell, we told you there was life out there” (even though they probably know where and who ‘some’ of the ET beings are!).

I don’t know about you, but this makes us here at UIP pretty damn excited about the prospect of meeting some of our 100 Billion neighbours out there….lets hope we meet the friendly neighbours first!

And some people think we are still alone in the Universe!!

UIP

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