Disney announced their Summer 2010 cruises recently, with ports of call in Dover, England; Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Warnemünde, Germany (Berlin); St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden.

They also have itineraries back to the Mediterranean the same summer (our 2007 Mediterranean cruise was amazing) and I highly recommend it.

With two new ships on the way, Disney will be making more ports of call more frequently. And as an avid cruiser (and now, with a child in tow) and Disney nut, I foresee many Disney Cruises in our future.

Of course, like any Disney vacation, the more the merrier! So if you want to join us, drop me a line and I'll send you our itinerary.

A few days ago, I wrote on cosmic theories, and stated:

Simply stated, my idea is that the universe continues to expand until the energy imparted upon all of the mass is sufficiently expended such that the universe begins to contract.

As it does, a critical mass begins to coalesce, and once enough of it does, the concentration of mass/gravity/energy gets so great that the fundamental nature of mass/gravity/energy are fundamentally changed for a fraction of a second, and the totality of this primordial mass explodes in (another) big bang. In essence, the entire universe is like a human heart, contracting and expanding in many cycles of creation and destruction.

Today I happened across a Scientific American article called Big Bang or Big Bounce?: New Theory on the Universe's Birth. And to my pleasant surprise, I found a portion that is supportive of this theory:

Gravity is typically an attractive force. ... But loop gravity suggests that the atomic structure of spacetime changes the nature of gravity at very high energy densities, making it repulsive. Imagine space as a sponge and mass and energy as water. The porous sponge can store water but only up to a certain amount. Fully soaked, it can absorb no more and instead repels water. Similarly, an atomic quantum space is porous and has a finite amount of storage space for energy. When energy densities become too large, repulsive forces come into play.

In other words, "the fundamental nature of mass/gravity/energy are fundamentally changed for a fraction of a second, and the totality of this primordial mass explodes in (another) big bang"... just like I wrote.

Now, I never said I came up with this idea (while I did discover it independently I don't assert I was the first) but it is interesting to note that the mathematics to support it was completed only in 2006. Meanwhile I recall discussing these ideas with my Physics professor as an undergrad in 1994.

I guess this sort of gives me a glimpse of what kinds of stuff I might have studied if I had remained in academia and astrophysics.