A poem in honour of the Universe and all its complexities
Source: Wix Images
I
It can’t be described, it’s such a mind-bend
To ask “what’s before”? A frustrating dead end
No matter at all, and no time to tell
Then it broke from its state, out from its shell
A sudden explosion. Once and for all?
Whatever that means; it started to sprawl
Enlarging at pace, a growing miasma
And no way to see through this murkiest of plasma
More rapid expansion a millisecond later
In the blink of an eye, the swiftest accelerator
“It’s called inflation”, later cosmologists claimed
(As if by naming it, they’d not be shamed)
“The Universe”, we note, “continues expanding”
(It’s relative you know, me notwithstanding)
Compressed material, at the edge of its bounds
A hot, thick-baked blend of primal compounds
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429991-000-how-to-think-about-the-big-bang/
II
With the passing of time, a 380,000 year-surge
Particles previously unknown, begin to emerge
Then four forces of nature, with pervasive extents
Still no-one to witness these strange events
If the Big Bang is weird, here’s a surprise
Space time is curved—with all that implies
And gluons glue quarks inside protons and neutrons
To say nothing of neutrinos and electrons and bosons
A question I’d raise: how do we know this?
Who’s best at describing this cosmic abyss?
High Priests of God, or of Cosmology?
Different world views—and vocabulary
Well maybe that’s true, but here is the crux
Everything’s sludge, yet it’s changing, in flux
A photon-baryon mix, an entangled infusion
Travelling through time, this scorching extrusion
Source: Wix Images
III
There’s still no free photons, nothing to see
Telescopes can’t probe the great mystery
Yet over the eons it slowly comes clear
As the forms we see now begin to appear
Early galaxies comprise stars, gas and dust
Dark Matter too—to find it we must
Matter creates galaxies, then and right now
Can we really unravel this—I’m wondering, how?
The stars start to glitter, at just the right time
Bourgeoning by the billions, it’s surely sublime
Each galaxy’s unique; there’s never a twin
Mostly spiral like ours, in a slow spin
Apply the tough thinking, yet it’s still hard to know
How the Universe grows—so go with the flow
Cast aside doubts; it’s empirically-based belief
Yes, more than mere theory—that’s a relief
Source: Wix Images
IV
Galaxies glisten, expand and mature
At nine billion years they are full of allure
In a remote place in space, a planet, emergent
Orbits its Sun with a Moon, all convergent
Planets line up, and then stabilize
The Sun at the Centre—not Earth, that’s not wise
The biochemical potential, that’s the big deal
On a planet that’s clearly, nearly ideal
Not too hot, nor too cold—the Goldilocks effect
It’s full of delights, and almost perfect
By now it’s a mere 600 million years ago
And the Archean era, a great dynamo
The conditions for life arise and get going
Everything’s evolving—species’ to-ing and fro-ing
Gould says “I name it punctuated equilibrium”
In stops and starts, to the deniers’ opprobrium
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life#/media/File:Mikrofoto.de-Blepharisma_japonicum_15.jpg
V
Under natural selection, many ways to propagate
Creatures lust and breathe, or merely, replicate
Thank you biology, for being so forceful
And to Darwin who chose not to be remorseful
Arrays of species, all fully adaptive
Making a living; with some, hyperactive
Life goes through many phase transitions
Later we glimpse them, ghostly fossil apparitions
And here is a puzzle we’re unable to crack
Throughout my life, we have jumped forward and back
How can all there is—the whole of space
Be squished in a point, without hints or a trace?
And there is a second, even more to enthral
What was the trigger that started it all?
Some say “my God”, others say “it’s science”
It’s clearly the latter, I say with defiance
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nasa-photo-of-a-dying-star-2012-10?r=US&IR=T
VI
In truth there’s a third, I’ve kept it till last
What happens from here? Let’s move from the past
In a few billion years, the stars will burn out
The very last glimmer, of that have no doubt
The stars as they die, exhausting their fusion
Will deliver the ultimate scary conclusion
Extinguished and lifeless, all energy secreted
The whole of the Universe, completely depleted
Before that occurs, there’s another tale of woe
Galaxies redshifting at pace, all go-go
Moving apart, speeding away
Each galaxy an isolate, on a different pathway
We’ll be gone too, but if by luck
An entity survives—I’d be awestruck
They’d not know a thing, as conceptually
Every galaxy will have moved out of range, perceptually
Source: https://sites.google.com/site/universeformationtheories/home/big-chill
VII
Remote, lifeless galaxies, nothing is thriving
A universe-wide heat death—no life surviving
Lifeless and cold, it’s all gone downhill
They’ve given it a name—it’s called the “Big Chill”
As bad as it sounds, there’s a fate worse than this
Perish the thought, but you cannot dismiss
It continues its momentum, and accelerates
Faster and faster with no apparent brakes
The acceleration quickens, as fast as light
Dark Energy’s power, everything gone out of sight
Now it all pulls apart, the very fabric of matter
All of the Universe, a complete and utter shatter
This has a name too—they call it “Big Rip”
The end of existence: not just a blip
The quintessence of everything, completely shredded
It’s the moment the Universe has finally dreaded
Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash
Fear not, dear reader, you won’t be there
To witness the carnage—there’ll be nothing to share
We’ll have died as a species, like all the rest
For science’s understanding, it’s one final test
Hold on you may say—that needs corrected
Artificial life will have evolved intelligent beings, perfected
They wouldn’t be us but they would be existing
Against powerful forces; resisting, persisting
Artificial intelligence or not, whatever we invent
Won’t be enough to stop the big rent
Once matter is utterly ripped asunder
There’s no coming back, no more to wonder
So under this option, things can’t be made right
It’s all an enigma, esoteric, recondite
There will literally be nothing left at all
And nothing we can do to ameliorate or forestall
Source: https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/universe/was-there-gravity-before-and-during-the-big-bang.html
IX
Yet there’s another alternative, an amazing event
Where the Universe reaches its maximum ascent
A pivotal point, it reaches gravitational interaction
Gathering pace, it rapidly enters contraction
Over the eons, it’ll return to a speck
This is more than a simple reality check
The Universe, proving there’s no free lunch
They’ve managed to label it the “Big Crunch”
To end up as a singularity again?
What’s next? We have no way to ascertain
We have no experiment on which to reflect
What happens when you have such an after-effect
Can the new singularity generate another existence?
Or stay as it is, on the path of least resistance?
Theorists say a re-bang can be called the “Big Bounce”
And all of past physics we’d have to denounce
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
X
So, another Big Bang like the one we once had
Which gets me to thinking—is that option bad?
Maybe that bang in our Universe’s deep past
Was a Big Bounce, arising from a previous blast?
Big Chill, Rip or Crunch, or serial Bouncer?
Your guess is as good as any cosmic announcer
But despite all the options, there will be an end
And nothing to do but to try to comprehend
Some folks get worried about all this speculation
Made up ‘just so’ stories—out of sheer frustration?
These showcase the poignant thoughts that we’ve had
But now I’m out of new ideas—for good or for bad
So this is the story I’ve tried to narrate
Only some of us like this—for some, they will hate
Having thought of the Universe, and these extraordinary accounts
I can’t decide which to keep, and which to renounce