Wormhole’s Shadow Might Be Detectable, Fascinating and Confusing #poem #poetry #physics #wormhole #space

Wormhole travel, though maybe only for a microscopic ship

Wormholes are hypothetical,
So hypothetically,
They may leave traces in the sky
That telescopes could see.

Where space-time is so warped,
Photons
might trace a ring,
While others falling through the pipe,
Leave dark where light had been.

Not my own reflector
To search for wormhole tubes,
But radio astronomy
Linked across the globe.

Confirming wormholes would confuse
What we know of gravity,
But since that force still puzzles us
They’d mesh abstractedly.

Kate Rauner

Thanks to livescience for pointing out this possibility. For some reason my poetic creativity has been on vacation for a few weeks – hope it’s back now.

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Some Mushrooms in the World Drive You Crazy – but insect feasts are the target #poem #poetry #poems #mushroom

http://mushroomobserver.org/

Many kinds of mushrooms
Occupy the lands,
Genetics lets a scientist
Distinguish distant aunts.

Perhaps a virus grabbed some genes,
Transferred them here from there.
Horizontal gene transfer
Could explain this share.

‘Cause more than once these fungi
Have made a wild find,
Psilocybin chemicals
That alter human minds.

But that can’t be the reason
‘shrooms would develop this,
They sure don’t care if you or I
Are sent upon a trip.

What good does psilocybin do
For a mushroom fighting rivals?
Suppresses insect appetites!
Ensures its spores’ survival!

Kate Rauner

Since highs are often associated with the munchies in us humans, I thought it was funny that this chemical might suppress appetite in bugs. Thanks to livescience for this hypothesis, and also for an article on the possibility that psilocybin may relieve depression in cancer patients.

Psychoactive mushrooms grow around the world

This is Mud Season, one rain quickly changes everything #poem #poetry #season #nature #weather

Clouds are prettier than the mud they bring

I grow an inch
with every step.
Clay grips my boots,
clay turned to mud.

The dog whimpers
as I towel his feet.
Between his toes are
balls of mud.

The car slides, slow motion
Across the drive
Till tires grip grass
at the edge of mud.

Some people have spring
summer
fall
And winter.

I have wind
fire
drought
And then the mud.

Kate Rauner

Ah, life in rural mountains of New Mexico. It won’t last. Sigh. When you live in a desert, you really can’t complain about rain.

Update: 5th day with rain! Compared to typical Februaries near Silver City NM USA, this year’s February is wetter than 95% of Februaries (I have 100 years of rain data by month), and the month’s not over!

Shelter in the deepest pines #haiku #poem #poetry #winter

Not going up there – nope – not going

Branches sway and bounce
Cold and harsh are winter winds
One lone bird blows by

Kate Rauner

Space Age Problem We Didn’t Bargain On – Trapped on Earth By Our Own Stupid Mess? #poem #poetry #space #NASA #Earth

NASA’s computer-generated image representing space debris as seen from high Earth orbit.

Space is vast and empty,
But not space close at hand,
Not the space around the Earth.
Our orbit now is jammed.

Every satellite we launch
Will someday be defunct
And hang above us, orbiting,
As billion dollar junk.

Everyone who’s serious
About the new space age
Has a plan for dealing with
Our quickly-closing cage.

Perhaps we’ll net the pieces,
Or blast each till it falls
To burn up like a meteor
In our atmospheric wall.

The million pieces of debris
Could trap us on our planet
Since even just a fleck of paint
Could crash a ship titanic.

Where is ET, we wonder?
Why don’t aliens
come to us?
Perhaps they’re trapped on their own worlds
By spheres of
their own
space junk.

Kate Rauner

The scifi movie Gravity began with space junk smashing a Shuttle, and that could happen in real-life. Read about laser and giant electric whip proposals to clean up near-Earth space. There’s a video here.

Journey to Eclipse 2017 #eclipse #poem #astronomy #nature

Another Eclipse 2017 poem, inspired by my journey to the eclipse centerline in the Boise National Forest – hurray for America’s public lands. The path of totality was about 70 miles wide for this eclipse and crossed the continent. The difference between 99% and 100% totality is day and night. Even a sliver of the sun’s disk is too bright to look at naked-eye and loses the corona in the glare. Well worth the travel and deserving of a rhyme.

The car is packed, we could escape
A zombie apocalypse,
But on this trip instead we chase
A total solar eclipse.

Nebraska may be cloudy
So Idaho’s our bet.
We carry everything we need, for
The best view we can get.

From the mountains of New Mexico
Through ponderosa pine,
A partial isn’t good enough,
We seek the centerline.

On the plains of Arizona
Our camping gear’s a plus.
The centerline is farther north
And so push-on we must.

Keep the gas tank topped,
There could be short supplies
Cause people are converging
To gaze into the sky.

Blood red rocks of Utah,
The finest that we see,
We leave behind without a stop
To chase totality.

Squirrels chirp out their annoyance, as
In Idaho we climb,
To a forest meadow,
To the centerline.

Eclipse camp

There’s time to lounge in camp
But First Contact will come soon
On the centerline
In the shadow of the Moon.

by Kate Rauner

Perfect conditions and a happy surprise – sunspots! It’s the bottom of the cycle so we weren’t expecting that. They don’t affect the eclipse – just add to viewing fun. Read more about the eclipse here.

Projection of Sun shortly after First Contact

Sky washed clean in the dawn #haiku #poem #amreading #nature

Silver sky at dawn
Hammered on the fierce anvil
Of a stormy night

by Kate Rauner

2nd edition now available! Expanded!

Find more poetry inspired by science and nature here on my blog – every other post or so. Or read one of my collections of rhyming poetry and a few haiku too.