Find my science-inspired poetry in this collection. Click here now to choose your favorite store.
Find my science-inspired poetry in this collection. Click here now to choose your favorite store.
The universe expands
Ever faster as we gaze,
Carries off our cosmic kin
Farther every day.
Light from other galaxies
Won’t have time
to reach our own.
In a few billion years,
Look up! We seem alone.
Kate Rauner
A short poem this week – and late! But I’ve been working a fire with my volunteer fire department, and my dog is sick, so I have excuses. I have had time to think about cosmology.
It’s hard to wrap my head around, but the universe is expanding and accelerating. So the speed of light stays constant, but distances grow. Eventually, other galaxies will be moving away from us so fast that their light can’t reach our own. Of course, human beings won’t exist by then and even our solar system may be gone.
If there are people in that distant future, what will they think of the universe? A Steady State model will explain what they’ll see, so they may never know there was a Big Bang. Perhaps the same thing has happened to us. The early universe may have been different in ways we can’t imagine. We may be missing the full truth, just like our hypothetical future brethren will.
Find my science-inspired poetry in this collection. Click here now to choose your favorite store.