Move Over, Pig...Let's Get Heliophysical!

If you haven't figured out what the Chinese Zodiac has to say about how the Year of the Pig will treat you, by all means please do. But if you discover you're not favored (we can't all be rabbits & goats), fret not--2007, ScienceDaily begs us to consider, is also the International Heliophysical Year! Come on--you know you weren't helio enough last year. Here's your chance to repent and really appreciate what glory (or havoc?) the sun is parlaying out into the universe. I knew I dragged my synthesizers out of the basement for something:

"Fifty years ago the International Geophysical Year marked the starting point to see Earth in space," said Hermann Opgenoorth, the European Space Agency's chief of solar system missions. "Now, with the IHY, we are on the threshold of being able to investigate the interconnectivity of the whole solar system." The IHY is just one campaign within a decade-long initiative called International Living With a Star, consisting of a collaboration of 27 space agencies around the world.

I love outing international contexts! Sun-Earth relations shouldn't be, well, appeased, but I'm all for psychoanalyzing the next coronal mass ejection. And thus I present...International Living With a Star!