Science Stories

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Transit of Venus Across the Face of the Sun
And the Unluckiest Man on the Face of the Earth

Edmund Halley had suggested that if you measured
The passage of Venus over the sun from selected
Places on Earth, you could work out the distance to the sun
By using triangulation and then go on to use that calibration
To find the distances to all the other bodies of the solar system.

These transits come in pairs eight years apart
And then there are none at all for a century dark.
There were none in Halley’s lifetime, but in 1761,
Twenty years after Halley’s death, the world was one.

Scientists set off for points all over the Earthly globe,
Hundreds of them, but most remained in problem mode.
Many were waylaid by war, shipwreck or sickness.
Then, too, there was much damage to the instruments.

Jean Chappe spent many months traveling to Siberia
By horse, sleigh, boat and coach, nursing his criteria
Over every bump. At last he was near, but swollen rivers
Blocked the way; locals blamed it on him looking at the heavens.

Guillaume Le Gentil set off from France a year ahead of time,
But got delayed and was yet stuck at sea in brine,
Impossibly trying to take measurements from a pitching ship.

He continued on to India, now having eight years to prepare
For the transit of 1769. He erected a viewing station there,
Having everything ready on the fine day of June 4th;
But just as Venus began its pass, a cloud slid forth
Right in front of the sun and stayed there and spent
Its time exactly for the the duration of the transit:
Three hours, fourteen minutes, and seven seconds.

Enroute to a port to head for home, he contracted dysentery
And was laid up for a year, but then finally left the territory
On a ship that was later hit by a hurricane off
Of the African coast and nearly wrecked and lost,
But he did make it home 12 years after setting off,
Only to find that his relatives had long since sealed his fate
By declaring him dead and then plundering his estate.

The few measurements from 1761 were of no benefit,
But, luckily, in 1769, James Cook had watched the transit
From a sunny hilltop in Tahiti, giving enough weight
Of information now for Joseph Lalande to calculate
The mean distance to the sun at about 150 million kilometers.

[austintorn@aol.com]

PHOTONIC WONDERS

I took a snapshot of a moving photon;
It filled a pixel and was not moving on.
The photo told me not how fast it had flown,
So I assumed this info couldn’t be known.

The photon was ageless at the speed of light,
As women are always young and always right,
For time had stopped—I thought time was movement.
Photons never get old or need improvement.

With my new contact lenses, I now can see
One photon, unmeasured by man—most need three.
It traveled 13 billion years, from the deep,
But what lights my dark head when I dream in sleep?

How come photons don’t pile up on the floor
Under my lamp when it shines all the more?
Lucky thing, for where would I put them all—
Doing light housekeeping into the hall?

Is it light that defines space, as EM?
Do I see the light? What is lit in REM?
Is light the answer to the TOE’s dark quiz?
Then wherever it reaches, existence is.


NEW 9TH PLANET FOUND!

Poor Pluto’s been banished to the underworld,
Charon rowing him to the land of the forgotten.
Schoolchildren petitioned for his return,
But he was voted off of the solar island.

Memory’s crutch for the order of the planets,
Is now just “MVEMJSUN”—
Old Pluto tried so darn hard, its position
Now even closer to the sun than Neptune’s.

Well, many have searched for quite a while for
The next planet without any success—
There have been hoaxes, theories, and some ghosts;
Yet, I have firm proof of another planet.

But, first, a review of some poor attempts:
“Vulcan” was spotted very close to the sun,
And “existed” for about five days,
But now is relegated to the Star Trek World.

Another “Vulcan”, impossible to see,
Being 180 degrees away from Earth,
Behind the sun, was seen in the movie
“Journey to the Far Side of the Sun”.

Could an asteroid like Eris be a planet?
Nope, not allowed, although all of the
Debris between Mars and Jupiter
Could have come from an unstable planet.

Nice try, but it’s not out there anymore,
And any planets of other solar systems
Don’t count, nor does Planet Hollywood
Or Daily Planet or any other restaurants.

Perhaps there’s another planet way out,
Beyond; that may be so, but, no matter,
Though it may become the 10th planet, since
I have found the newest 9th with no doubt.

The 9th planet does follow an orbit
Close to Earth’s, ever falling toward the sun—
It is right under our nose: It’s the moon!
But, wait, you say, it is Earth’s satellite.

Our moon is unique in the solar system—
It’s not captured by the Earth, but by the sun,
It’s orbit being everywhere concave to Sol.
(Thanks to Issac Asimov for proving this.)

Never does our moon fall away from the sun,
For it’s attracted to it about twice as much
As it is to the Earth, although the moon and
The Earth do form a double planet system

That revolves about a common point that
Happens to be inside of the Earth.


GRAVITY’S WELL

Gravity fell, from its fundamental throne,
Being a blend of matter and motion.
As with time, if we take away what’s known,
Its attraction fades into oblivion.

It is already gone in my dream sleep
In which I float, fly, and hover at will;
But, upon awakening from the deep,
The super bed-gravity holds me still.

Instead of dieting, I live on the moon,
Playing golf, but the bunkers are so deep
I have to take some giant leaps until noon;
‘Though I love the freedom of low-grav feet.

If there were none, life could really be tough,
Our stuff floating away—what losing brings;
What a mess, although it might help those fluffs
Mercilessly dominated by material things.

If gravity’s of movement and matter,
Like time, it might be a new dimension,
So to speak, but may still need the other three,
Although it’s just the right dose of tension.

We can conquer gravity’s whole world round
By the mere lift of a little finger;
Yet we get hang-ups about our hang-downs,
And thoughts of what the hell it is still linger.


FROM MATTER TO US

The big bang, or materialization,
One of many, was prosperous for us,
For its constants allowed for life’s basis
‘Though it didn’t have us in mind at all.

It arose from some unbreakable stuff,
Perhaps several such eternal things,
Or the same from previous contraction;
But not from nothing, for how could this be?

Now, if the big bang’s material result
Was not favorable for our becoming,
Then we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.
‘Though auspicious, it guaranteed nothing.

Matter and antimatter formed of it,
In equal parts, most of it annihilating;
However, some black holes evaporated,
Leaving a fortunate amount of matter.

Matter’s here that works as building blocks,
The strong force’s stability opposed
To the weak force’s dispersal through decay,
Plus electromagnetism’s motion.

Lucky, not planned, all this gave us a chance,
As from the stars cameth our help and hope,
When they generated all the elements
That brewed a soup of fortuitous accidents.

Earth was a golden distance from the sun—
A large number of other planets unfit;
Earth’s features evolved in a good proportion
To sustain the beginnings of early life.

Soil and bacteria generated oxygen;
Death chose the useful forms over the useless,
Kept track of by RNA-like structures
In life’s cradle, though we had not yet appeared.

Our blind fated path was the further paved
When asteroids finished most of the species—
Far from a feature of intelligent design,
But it opened the space that was needed.

Evolution sifted through the accidents,
As it directed the good from the bad;
We began from the fusing of chromosomes
That made us incompatible with “chimps”.

From matter to us—to all our senses,
To our brains, our minds, and consciousness,
In a universe of matter and space,
Past and future, we won the human race.

It only took 13.7 billion years,
For these many rare events to occur.
Though just a few of the coin tosses were good,
The bad tosses went nowhere in a hurry!

Well, I’ve left a lot of good fortune out,
And perhaps you readers can help fill it in;
Know, too, that bad luck may come as well:
Global warming, nuclear war, or more asteroids.

The lure of myth is ever great to man;
But, beyond the apparent solidity
Of the word “faith” is its meaning—of
Belief in the unseen supernatural!

Matter and motion manufactures all
Being and time in the arena of space,
We the complex composites from simple stuff,
The ultimate, so far, in the universe.


MOONLIGHT SONATA

The music of the spring was in the breeze,
A prelude borne by airy musicians
Of the trees—the mating calls of the birds,
That opened for the cosmic symphony.

The Music of the Spheres played in the park
At night—flung down by our Father, the Sky,
Through the soft night to our Mother, the Earth,
Then to us, their audience and progeny.

The planets joined in a concert to the
Merrie Monthe of Maie, arrayed as follows:
There was Venusia, the Bringer of Peace,
Singing side by side with warring Marsius.

Flitting about was the wingéd Mercuria,
The speedy messenger who conducted
The orchestra, melting all of us who
Were touched by her wand of burning desire.

And mighty Zeus, was there, full to the brim
With the jollity of the fat man's belly.
By Jove, came Saturnus, so very gray
With age—lumbering into the party.

Thence sat Urania, the magician, and
The old sea captain, King Nep, the mystic,
But not Pluto; he was downsized, no more
One of the harmonics—an underworld!

Jupiter’s music was round and robust,
While Saturn’s boomed with the sounds of grandeur
And the old venerable melodies;
But, Mercury soon picked up the pace.

Next flowed the serene love songs of Venus,
Followed inexorably by Martial marches.
Now was the time for Urania's magic—
She played musical jokes and surprises.

At last, their music came to mesh as one,
And our wanderers of the night floated
Away on the haunting mystical strains
Of King Nep's tune, into the May Flower moon.

Now we’re touched, so touched by the starlight,
Afraid that we'll ne’er be the same again.
Can you sense the euphony of the spheres?
Can you fathom the theory of everything?

[austintorn@aol.com]

THE PURSUIT OF MERCURIA

For some years I have pursued that lovely
Greco-Roman woman named Mercuria;
I’ve yearned till I could no longer reason.
Once, just the sight of her would have pleased me;

But now, at whatever cost and downfall,
I must taste of her fiery passion.
At whatever risk I plot her every move.
When the time is right, I’ll be seeing her;

It will be just us, while the world’s asleep.
The problem is that she’s a fast woman
And is quite difficult to even sight,
Much less capture, entrance, embrace and kiss.

And I can only have her for awhile;
Before dawn, if I linger with her long,
We’d soon be consumed by a rising fire;
After twilight, we’d be lost in darkness.

Yes, I have courted her many times,
But she’s so elusive, fleeting, and small.
Once I waited for her just before nightfall.
All was perfect—’twas the best time of all.

There was the calm of a windless sunset,
Then the brief brooding of twilight’s gloaming,
And the promise of a slow sultry night.
Clouds arrived—and so I missed her again!

She strayed not far from her fiery lover.
While I may have glimpsed her (I wasn’t sure),
She slid toward her master’s gravity,
Condemned to whirl about his light;

(However, I was quite determined;
‘Twas the thrill of the quest that kept me strong.)

I planned to surprise her just before dawn;
I crept onto the frosty roof, near slipping,
There waiting. Damn! Clouds were boiling along
And blocking the view of her beauty rare.

Suddenly the clouds cleared, and she was mine—
Just over the eastern horizon was
The planet Mercury—dear Mercuria.
I stayed with her as long as possible,

Naked in the night, until, to blazes
She went when the sun arose; however,
Memories remain of those precious moments
And now she belongs to me forever.

Venus is too easy, Mars always there,
Jupiter ever-present, Saturn bright,
Earth under my feet, Pluto underworled;
King Neptune, Queen Urania? Where are you?


THE VANISHING

God is losing his definition in stone,
As his sworn traits disappear one by one,
In a retreat to higher ground that is
Outside of space, time, and all existence.

He made Adam fully formed, without a navel;
Now, an asterisk on page one of the
Philippine Catholic bible says no,
Don’t take it literally—it’s just ot so.

So, because of evolution’s record,
God’s bible was no longer written in
Plain text for the common man, but now is
Open to the guesses of interpretations.

God’s become aloof—he just started the Bang
And let the design gradually evolve
Over thirteen billion years into man,
The endless universe a mere backdrop.

He no longer intercedes in causes,
Except in the nebulous cures they claim,
Like improved hearing or made one safe from harm,
But he never heals amputees, or appears.

For the latest is that he must stay hidden,
Even if the miracles of his son
Were very much out in the open to see—
Better that no one know of him clearly.

So there is faith—blind trust in the unknown.
Believe or be tortured—or has this, too,
The Word of God, become inoperable?
Only the supernatural realm remains.

Why is the Old Testament out of use
In many churches, in favor of the new?
Was it divine revelation or not?
Do his fits not become a good role model?

OK, so science has found that the universe
Operates just as it would without him,
That evil spirits don’t lead to bad health,
That brain imbalances can lead to sins.

He is the intelligent designer that
Is deducible from not understanding design,
But wait, he is of infinite design—
Now I know that something had to make him!

Devil, Hell, the bible, intercession, etc.,
Are all gone—he is undefinable—
Protected from the knowing—safe, away:
Yet claimable as an unseeable unknowable!

He just is, the same as the universe
Cannot be, leaving us all on our own,
Just as is the case that’s seen by science;
Now we’re a planned random accident!

Terrorists now go to war in his name;
It’s all going astray—the design fails;
If I knew where the great designer stays,
I’d question his mysterious(insane) ways.

What is left of the vanishing phantom?
More features have fallen than I’ve listed,
The extraordinary superstition
Remains only as a shadow of a wish.


FROM TOE TO BEING AND
FINDING MEANING THEREIN


Why & How

Nonexistence can’t be, nor could something
Make itself or always have been perfect.
Before definition is the possible—
Timeless–formless—all options were open!


What, Where, Who, Then, and When

“What” matter stabilizes in “where” space,
Begetting the appearances in motion as
“When” future moves through the “now” to “then” past—
This spirit of life granting our “who” being.


The Forces

The strong force facilitates stability;
The weak force allows changeability;
Electric action leading to magnetic motion
Facilitates the movement of appearances.


The TOE to Being

The TOE has to explain origin, method,
And life, and so this does, the key being
That movement of appearances begets
Changes in time, leading to our life’s realm.


Universal Answers

Since there’s no rhyme nor reason for existence,
We’re free to make our own meaning of it;
If we don’t, then it’s really meaning-less;
If we do—it becomes the ultimate!


Luck Happens

Asteroids swept away many species;
Two chromosomes fused, leaving chimps behind;
RNA remembers all survivors;
Good fortune smiled on Homo Sapiens.


The Balance Sheet

Life on Earth is death’s borrowed debit;
We spend this life on good fortune’s credit;
We’re not God’s puppets, but free of the strings;
Dispensing with angst, we’re free in being.


We Are What We Are

Unintelligently designed, humans
Were a lucky accident of nature,
A haphazard Rube Goldberg “invention”,
A nervous system ruled by ancient times.


The Lucky State of Us

As an accident of evolution,
We have the ultimate freedom of choice—
No “God’s will”—we’re beyond instinctive;
We’re free to grow and evolve through learning.


Difficulties Abound

Emotion often bypasses the intellect;
Many stand at the brink of insanity.
Only education can save the world—
We’re at the turning point of history.


Wishful Thinking

Pride: Ego exaggerates self-importance
To claim that we’re specially created,
Deserving a divine destiny.
Humility: we’re electrochemical.


Unfortunately…

Those who can’t or won’t learn are doomed to stay
As their robot selves, living the sitcom life,
But, learning disperses the myths of old—
We make our own way or stagnate and die.


Meaning—or Not

Direction arrives or one goes nowhere;
Growth happens or one vanishes to null;
Creation comes or reaction destroys;
Planning makes a life or it collapses.


Coming Full Circle

Searching for the ultimate happenstance
Of how we began leads to exploration
Of within and without, a rewarding quest;
Upon return, we know the place for the first time.


THE SIMPLE TOE THAT EXPLAINS ALL

Before time was the timeless—all at once;
Before form was the formless—everything.
Existence had to be since something IS,
For nonexistence is an impossibility.

Quarks, photons, and electrons were of
Possibility, either a lot or a bit,
Along with dark matter, dark energy,
Which collects from gravity into stars.

The strong force stabilizes matter,
The weak force disperses matter;
Electromagnetic force allows movement.
Gravity arises from all of the above.

Stars generate the basic elements;
Supernovae generate all the rest.
These atoms form molecules that lead to
Life’s complexity—from simplicity.

RNA tracks successes, failures meet death;
Luck, time, and accidents evolve the species.
Appearances in motion grant our being
Through their what-where and then-now-when.

The brain interprets reality and puts
A face on the waves of sound, light, color, touch,
And a sense on molecules’ smell and taste.
Consciousness is the brain’s perception of itself.

We operate through the where-to and where-from,
Using the what-then and the what-when of matter,
Leading to history, progress, wishes,
And remembrance, or being—

All made possible through the movement of
Appearances that creates past (then) and
Future (when) through the now, along with
Matter (what) in space’s place (where).

So, the Theory of Everything after
Reality Was Generated:


Being
=
matter moving through space from possibility.


WE ARE MOST FREE WHEN
WE ARE ASYMPTOTICALLY CO-JOINED


The strong family unit, as the three quarks,
Is bonded by the power of its grouping,
But loses identity if the home breaks—
Other pairs soon forming from divorcing.

Then comes the prison of solitude—
Chained to isolation with fortitude,
Floating, lost, without effects of affects,
Losing the identity conferred by others.

Within the proton, gentleness becomes strength,
For the members are free to explore at length,
Never smothering, but building unity,
The unit’s direction adding to the one.

The strong force grows weaker near the quarks,
And so we may observe them someday,
Shining in their primordial glory—
The beginning of all things composite.

Identity is not lost in the co-joining—
True loves don’t crowd the hearts of the others,
But, rather, look outward, in the same direction,
Close, joined, but not in the others’ section.

It is a seeming arithmetic violation,
That in summation we become greater;
We don’t merge, having supported freedom,
Yet still share the same good vibrations.

Love matures when partners let it flow beyond—
Free to wend its way to places dear and fond.
Love’s butterfly prospers when winds blow free;
Unconditional love never binds—it bonds.

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Three Quarks for Muster Mark”

Naked quarks would really love to go wild and dance,
But there’s only a finite amount of energy and chance;
So they would spiral out of control, having quite a blast!
Such they have been confined within the proton—to last.

They’re made bottoms-up; can we see them tops-down, a go-go?
No, for the Quantum Censor protects the charm show,
Their strange beauty and flavor bound up and down,
As the proton is much immune to disturbance around.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Age of Rust

Aliens visit the Earth, only to find it covered with rust. This visit does not occur in future times when the Earth is ancient, but was back in youthful times before there was even an atmosphere.

Bacteria have just begun making oxygen, discarding it as a mere waste product—an unwanted poison. Everything on Earth that is capable of being oxidised becomes oxidised. We see evidence of this rusting in bands of red oxide deep underground. Only when this process came to an end did the oxygen levels in the atmosphere begin to rise. They were only 1 percent after 2.4 billions years. Now they are 20 percent.

The aliens soon left our 'useless' planet, that rusting junkpile that would never amount to anything. They did take a photo of the Eiffel Tower, however.

[dolly]

Hi Austin, all i can say is WOW! wonderful writing

PEACE dolly

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Near Decline of Physics
Due to Its Undressed Terms

The quarks, those constituents of the orgy
Playfully bound within the nucleons’ chamber
Are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top,
The last two once being called beauty and truth;

However, when just one of a type was contained
It became referred to, say, as a naked beauty,
And thus nude tops and bottoms their charms revealed—
To ever be in closeness binding, bonding,

So, they even tried just u, d, s, c, b and t
To prevent some ultimate collapse of physics,
But the truth of the flavors beneath the veils
Remained as the sheerest vision preferred.

So, we have these vibrant dancing ladies:
The naked heavyweight top, charming up,
And, down, the strange beauty of the raw truth,
With a bare bottom just around and behind.

They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling,
In the universal dance of stunning motion,
The polarity sometimes reversed,
Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.

And then there are Eden’s many colors,
In this flower garden filled with flavors,
Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
And magenta undulations unstopped.

Gluons are the bees of the flower beds,
Carrying pollen back and forth to bond
The many relationships that make
This loved world go ‘round as reality.

Eyed in views that probe the fundamental,
Quarks strangely swirl in and out of sight,
Pulsing, throbbing with elemental delight,
In and out—the love-made life of eternity.

These attractions in the altogether denuded
In the buff became the strong force, manifest,
That the mother-nature-naked terms exposed
To denote the stark beauty of truth uncovered.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Isaac’s Repeal of Myth

There is a mote in space known as Earth,
A pale blue dot of fluff orbiting a hearth,
Due but to Newton’s 2nd law of motion,
No Godly hand guiding it safe around the sun.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Curious Encounter With Madame

De Broglie declared that all motion
Of particles must be associated
With the propagation of a wave.
Einstein then wrote that De Broglie
“had lifted the corner of the great veil.”

Einstein later had an opportunity
To lift another veil—that of Marie Curie,
When they vacationed together
Quite reactively, in the Swiss alps.

Did they or didn’t they transmit energy?
Einstein was a ladies’ man, though married,
Busy having an affair with his cousin, Elsa,
And Marie was a married man’s lady. (Paul).

Einstein wrote his wife that Marie was a grouch,
But was this just a misdirection meant to allay?
They inhaled the alpine air, talking science,
Strolling far and trying to name the peaks.