This music video has lots of closeup views of the sun and isn’t a bad song to boot. Note: the sun doesn’t show up until about 40 seconds into the video.

David Deutsch, in his presentation at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), brings up a very powerful concept. It’s that the laws of physics that produce, for instance, quasars also produce, billions of light-years away, complex organic structures such as our brains. These brains can in turn build instruments to detect quasars and then create mathematical models, based on the laws of physics, that, in essence, re-create the quasars. It’s truly amazing that the universe is not only capable of these extremes of both quasars and complex organics but also this mirroring capability.

It’s similar to placing two mirrors facing each other so that you see an infinity of reflections when you stand between them. The Universe has built a mirror to look at itself and also to look at itself looking at itself. That is remarkable.

In a similar line of thought I have wondered how the conservation of energy applies to knowledge. Take for instance when Einstein first had the idea of E= mc. That idea required a minuscule amount of energy but it allowed for the creation of atomic bombs. How do we measure the power of ideas?

From TED:
Legendary physicist David Deutsch is author of The Fabric of Reality and the leading proponent of the multiverse intrepretation of quantum theory ??? the astounding idea that our universe is constantly spawning countless numbers of parallel worlds. In this rare (and delightfully engaging) public appearance, he weaves a complex and captivating argument placing the study of physics at the center of our species’ survival. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 19:45)

Well, it’s about that time of the decade. A new solar cycle is upon us with all it’s cell phone interfering goodness.

The International Astronomical Union is meeting to discuss what constitutes a planet. The usual list of 9 planets in the solar system my increase to 12 and continue to grow as more “planets” are discovered.

If the proposed Resolution is passed, the 12 planets in our Solar System will be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313. The name 2003 UB313 is provisional, as a “real” name has not yet been assigned to this object. A decision and announcement of a new name are likely not to be made during the IAU General Assembly in Prague, but at a later time. The naming procedures depend on the outcome of the Resolution vote. There will most likely be more planets announced by the IAU in the future. Currently a dozen “candidate planets” are listed on IAU’s “watchlist” which keeps changing as new objects are found and the physics of the existing candidates becomes better known.

The naming of the 10th planet - X - has finally been resolved. It’s a bummer that they didn’t keep the names Xena and Gabriel as the planet/moon pair but that was a long shot anyway. At least they did sneak in a reference to the TV show Xena in the naming of the moon.

Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia page for the new 10th planet Eris:

The discovery team proposed Eris on 6 September 2006. On 13 September 2006 it was accepted as the official name by the IAU.^[21][18] The name in part reflects the discord in the astronomical community caused by the debate over the object’s (and Pluto’s) nature, while the name of its moon, Dysnomia (”lawlessness”), retains an oblique reference to the dwarf planet’s old informal name Xena, portrayed on TV by Lucy Lawless.

A meteor is headed for Mars with a possible impact date of January 30th, 2008.

If the meteor hit’s it is estimated that it would be about the size of meteor crater in Arizona. I hope it impacts. It would be wicked cool to see a newly created crater. Plus it would be a big wakeup call to the world population that we really, REALLY, need to spend more money searching for these asteroids and be prepared to do something, anything, in case one is  coming for Earth.

Scientific American has a nice desktop image of Saturn’s moon Iapetus.