DARK MATTER

by Lavinia Kumar

The early Universe was a strange place. Early in its history—in the first quintillionth of a second—the entire cosmos was nothing more than a stunningly hot plasma. And, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this soup of quarks and gluons was accompanied by the formation of weird little primordial black holes (PHBs). It’s entirely possible that these long-vanished PHBs could have been the root of dark matter. MIT’s David Kaiser and graduate student Elba Alonso-Monsalve suggest that such early super-charged black holes were very likely a new state of matter that we don’t see in the modern cosmos. “Even though these short-lived, exotic creatures are not around today, they could have affected cosmic history in ways that could show up in subtle signals today,” Kaiser said. “Within the idea that all dark matter could be accounted for by black holes, this gives us new things to look for.” That means a new way to search for the origins of dark matter. (Graphic: Depiction of a primordial black hole forming amid a sea of hot, color-charged quarks and gluons, a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.) —Universe Today, June 17, 2024

The British gentry are old hands at dark matter,

invisible behind those large gates,

lengthy curved lanes lined by trees

that lead to rumors of manors, 

over-trimmed gardens, and shootable 

deer, duck, and pheasant.

 

A lesser Brit, Stephen Hawking, created

a jigsaw of calculations, found 

what he thought must be the dark matter

in those hidden places—hiding thirty percent

of universe’s riches in those exotic 

out-of-the-way spaces.

 

But now, two scientists agree with him,

have found the hidden more interesting 

than plebian places, like village houses,

like quarks glued together by gluons.  

And, as is proper for dukes, princes, and lords,

each dark piece is far away from another,

with much space between.

 

But, alas, other nosy scientists, stars 

in our universe, are now spying on this matter, 

to find why, how, such riches were achieved.  

And who wouldn’t?   Will it lead to equality?

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art. 

SWINGING ON WINGS OF FLAME

by Mary K O’Melveny

There's a house somewhere I know where the fire's burnin'

All night long… 

And even though the wind may now be howlin'

The stars are bright and they push me on and on

—“Half Moon Rising” (Yonder Mountain String Band)

  

We keep exploring outer space for answers.

Out there, we learn that black holes make sounds

of music as they swallow everything

around them. Celestial destruction

to the tune of string band melodies, as if

the Osborne Brothers or the Red Clay Ramblers

had booked a cosmic venue where eager stars

do-si-do around dark matter’s edges.

 

Sit still and you will hear creation’s story

spelled out with mandolins, fiddles, five-string

banjos. On Earth we are orchestrating our

own demise. Everything has turned extreme.

Our hottest week just past will not be last.

The burning air tastes like barbeque.

Put an ear to ground, hear it singe, smolder,

sear from simmering smog and haze.

 

Far better to harmonize and tap our feet

as Earth’s axis shifts and we wobble, weave

like drunken sparrows. Saharan sands might

land in Kansas while floodwaters choke New

Jersey highways and algal blooms poke out

from Florida’s rivers. Grab a good seat

at our cosmic amphitheater where smoke

rises from the speed of guitar picking.

 

If you listen closely, you can hear some scat,

nonce, argot. Go with the flow. Flat Foot Floogie,

Tutti Fruiti. Explosions of fervor, fury

unleashed by gas ripples in galaxy

clusters. Who can say this fate will not be

ours as well? One hopes we won’t be around

by then. For now, we can dance as glissandos

of sound drift from the heart of the Milky Way.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

WAVES

by Geoffrey A. Landis

"Cosmic Chirp From Black Holes Colliding Vindicates Einstein:" The sound of the collision from a billion light-years away is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. —NY Times, Feb. 11, 2016

Waves in space and time:
a billion light years away
black holes whirl and dance.


Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist, a science fiction writer, and a poet. As a scientist, is a fellow of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, working on developing new concepts for space missions.  As a science fiction writer, he's written one novel and over fifty short stories, winning the Hugo and Nebula awards.  As a poet, he has written numerous poems, including this one.