Category Archives: Science

Painting: Hey Mr Spaceman

March 4, 2019art, Painting, Science, watercolourart, astronaut, Fandom, Painting, Science Fiction, space, watercolourThe Cheesesellers Wife

An Apollo astronut floating high….

….plus a bonus poem, this time about someone in a red suit:

Resplendent in red

She came to see me
Resplendent in red
Glittering with dust
Her elegant bone structure evident more than ever
Desiccated and dead
Spacesuit blown
Floating past the view screen
When I know we retrieved her from orbit yesterday

First published in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Associations print journal Star*Line 40.4

Poem: Sun dogs

January 26, 2019nature, philosophy, poem, Poetry, Scienceenvironment, Life, philosophy, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Not the sun itself
but phantom stars in the day.
Mother star’s puppies, mock suns,
illusions as the Sun plays
with high soaring crystals of ice,
they light the horizon.
So illusions of celebrity brighten myriad lives,
but only on the margins.

Sun dogs all.

Friday Poem: Earthfast

January 18, 2019Friday Poem, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryArchitecture, Arthur Seymour John Tessimond, Blogging, Friday Poem, Guest poem, poem, poetry, science, science poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock,
Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core;
Leave more than the painter’s or poet’s snail-bright trail on a friable leaf;
Can build their chrysalis round them – stand in their sculpture’s belly.

They see through stone, they cage and partition air, they cross-rig space
With footholds, planks for a dance; yet their maze, their flying trapeze
Is pinned to the centre. They write their euclidean music standing
With a hand on a cornice of cloud, themselves set fast, earth-square.

by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond (1902- 1962)

Poetry describing a technical profession—bliss!

The Shape of Rain

January 9, 2019poem, Poetry, Science, science poetrypoem, poetry, science, science poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

I am a rain drop.
Imagine raindrops
you see tears
but clouds do not cry.
Over England they excrete
ice crystals that melt
drop and tumble
balling, falling.
Surface tension
marries colliding drops
yet divorce is common.
Plummeting, flattening
rain discs hit the London pavement
lose their identity
in puddles and pools.

Published at Fourth and Sycamore in July 2018.

We are Stardust

November 24, 2018astronomy, cosmology, Life, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryastronomy, cosmology, Life, physics, poem, poetry, science, science poetry, star, We are StardustThe Cheesesellers Wife

Orbital telescopes send home images
nebulae, glowing with colour
last remnants of fat, dying, exploded stars
lingering across the night sky
lighted by millennia old catastrophe

They are where the magic happens
atoms forged in burnt out stars
a deathbed bequest that has made us all

Space Within

August 25, 2018astronomy, beauty, cosmology, Life, philosophy, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryastronomy, beauty, cosmology, Earth, Life, philosophy, poem, poetry, Science Fiction, science poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Considering the expanding universe and ultimate cooling, I pause
remembering photos of star birth amid nebulosity,
nuclear furnaces blossoming.

Telescopes in orbit or secluded in foreign deserts
produce pictures in lights we cannot see
show immensities in glorious un-colours.

In the back garden, I look up, past scudding clouds,
watch coloured pinpricks arrayed over black sky
with occasional satellites twinkling by beneath.

Feeling the breeze, green with trees, redolent with life
thinking of all those things we cannot see
here and all the way up there.

Rocks

March 3, 2018beauty, England, philosophy, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetrybeauty, geology, Life, poem, poetry, rocks, science, science poetry, space, time, travelThe Cheesesellers Wife

Unimaginably ancient, preserving moments in time;
billion year old pebbles from unknown floods
bones fallen into an ancient abyss
ten thousand year old footprints along an English estuary.
Sitting on a rock, you touch time.

Rocks move. They melt and set, erode to dust
and then the dust settles
forms new rock over time almost unimaginable.
This undulating plain formed at great depths
was thrust up to mountainous heights
now lies placid for your walking comfort.

Go find a rock
and travel in time and space.

Brief bloom

February 28, 2018astronomy, beauty, cosmology, Life, nature, philosophy, poem, Poetry, Science, Science Fiction Poetry, science poetry, speculative poetryastronomy, Earth, environment, hope, humanity, Life, NASA, nature, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Poetry, science poem, science poetry, solar system, space, speculative poetry, sun, Technology, travel, volcanoThe Cheesesellers Wife

We are a brief bloom
On the fragile skin
Of a molten body
Encircling a massive furnace

We are a blossoming of sentience
With encrusted technologies
Craving wonder, hoping for company
Seeking knowledge and excitement

We truly are stardust
Our bodies built from atoms
Forged in successive stellar explosions
We crave the glories of the Universe

We are Human

Re-blogged from last year

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160510.html

A poem by Richard Feynman

January 31, 2018poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryGuest poem, philosophy, physics, poem, poetry, Richard Feynman, science poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Richard Feynman was not only a brilliant physicist but one of the 20th Century’s great thinkers. He also loved playing pranks and thumbing his nose at authority. And, he wrote poetry!

Collecting Reality

There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the Sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in…

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Physics Lecture

January 20, 2018astronomy, cosmology, nature, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryastronomy, mathematics, maths, physics, poem, poetry, quantum, Schrödinger, science poetry, UniversityThe Cheesesellers Wife

Equations straggle across the blackboards
dance and shimmer
spill understanding and enlightenment
making the strange world of quantum
less of a confusement
less of a set of contradictory statements.
Now you see it now you don’t.
Was Schrödinger’s cat truly there/not there?
The equations say Yes
as they are folded into Hilbert space
and all becomes obvious.
Even to our post party undergraduate brains.

……remembering back to University………