Science Poetry - Tumblr Posts
John Updike wrote this poem in 1960 about strange, ghost-like particles called neutrinos. But our knowledge since then has changed. For example, there are now three types of neutrinos — all of which certainly have mass. Read a simple breakdown by Fermilab spokesman Kurt Riesselmann in symmetry magazine.
When Carl tells me it’s Rayleigh scattering that makes blue light, canting off molecular grit, go slowgait through the airy jell, subdued, and outlying mountains look swarthy, or wheat blaze tawny-rose in the 8:00 sun, how I envy his light touch on Earth’s magnetic bridle. Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.
Diane Ackerman’s poem “Diffraction (for Carl Sagan)”
Part of her homage to the planets and science, in verse. Ah, how I am fascinated with the everythingness of everything :)
(via Brain Pickings)
a lullaby about celestial delights.
There once was a ripple in space That grew at incredible pace Now close observation Reveals this inflation Has left an indelible trace.
Limerick poet Mick Twister rhymes yesterday’s news that physicists had observed gravitational waves, strong proof that cosmic inflation occurred in the earliest moments of our universe. (via jtotheizzoe)
Leopard slugs (Limax maximus) mating! While dangling on a thick line of mucus, both slugs extend their male reproductive organs from their heads and twine them together to exchange sperm.
Source. And diagrams of those dreamy sex organs.
truthfully, my soul longs
for the warm embrace of faith in something bigger,
just as much as it rejects
the cold handshake of the vengeful God
(or a God’s vengeful believers,
depending how you see it).
no, i seek not religion;
like the atoms of my very being
i crave the emergence of crystals.
could i be greater than the sum of my parts?
is there a someone
or a something
who walked through the dingy magick store of space-time
and rifled through the gently clinking boxes of rocks and gems
and somehow
amongst the clutter and sparkle
chose to pick me up,
dust me off,
and take me home?
am i to one day be displayed
on the trinket shelf of the universe?
perhaps this is the journey of life:
being carried softly home
and placed amongst the precious things
as a tender voice says
“oh, aren’t you beautiful?”