PLUTONIC

by Charles Frederickson & Saknarin Chinayote

A pair of small alien worlds, Ceres and Pluto, move into the spotlight this year as spacecraft arrive at their cosmic shores for the first time. NASA's Dawn spacecraft released its first views of Ceres on Monday, already hinting at previously unknown craters. Still ahead for NASA's New Horizons probe is former planet Pluto, billions of miles from Ceres and the king of a distant, icy realm. Both are dwarf planets, mini-worlds that just don't make the cut as official planets. It's a vast population of worldlets that scientists don't know much about. But if all goes according to plan, that will change starting now. And it's about time the little guys got some attention. --Nadia Drake for National Geographic, January 21, 2015

In square world spherical obliqueness

Dwarf planet Pluto asteroid Ceres

Obscure classic rock ‘n roll giants

Water vapor rising icy volcanism

What lies beneath iron core

Subsurface ponds lakes seas oceans

Flood of data requires validation

Icy outnumbering terrestrial gassy rocky

Pluto’s moons atmosphere bending sunlight

Charon Hydra Nix Styx Kenderos

Pluto twice size of Charon

Unjust travesty stripped of planethood

Largest outer solar system dependent

Reigns slightly ahead of Eris

Orbit so elongated crisscrossing domains

Categorically downgraded blacklisted by ex-spurts

Eight full-fledged planets enduringly survive

Pneumonic spoiled My Very Energetic

Mother Served Us Nine Pizzas

Outcast suffering complex inequality complex

Tipsy topsy-turvy cosmic seesaw consciousness

Science séance predicting what’s next

New Horizon groundbreaking astrogasm discoveries

Mistaken identity Status Quo-Vadis regained

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 

DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE

by Martin Elster

This is an illustration of water in our Solar System through time from before the Sun's birth through the creation of the planets. (Image source: Bill Saxton, NSF/AUI/NRAO via Science Daily) “Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth's water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere. New work from a team including Carnegie's Conel Alexander found that much of our Solar System's water likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space. Their work is published in Science.” --Science Daily, September 25, 2014

The molecules commingling in your glass

once swirled in clouds of interstellar gas,

surrendered to a leisurely collapse

and drenched a world whose pair of crystal caps

interns them under sleds and fleecy shoes,

while warmer zones allow them to infuse

the stems and stalks of your Kukicha tea

or trickle up your favorite apple tree.

A cornice softens on the Matterhorn,

hastens toward Green Lake to be reborn

a mirror amid the heights, evaporates,

condenses in a stretch of blue, then waits

for drops to fuse and fatten, fall and land

on forest, field or the parading band —

a rill of resonances drifting down

the central boulevard of some small town,

each drumming hand, each fifing lung, each brain

brimming with primeval, living rain.

Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens!, is also a composer and serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poems have appeared in such journals as Astropoetica, The Flea, The Martian Wave, The Rotary Dial, and in the anthologies Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 Rhysling Anthology, and New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan. Martin’s poem, “Walking With the Birds and the Bones Through Fairview Cemetery” received first prize in the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry Competition 2014.

THE JOY OF SCIENCE

by Tricia Knoll

The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System. "This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture. "Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.

They deserve a dance
of joy, a cheer, a beer
these people who tracked
that small ship into the outer

limit of imagination, the caffeine,
the endless nights brought home
when science goes further,
goes better, does beyond

into the interstellar cloud
of stardust, the dark where
both goatherds and villains
have stared, wondering. 


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. The night sky in western Oregon is frequently obscured by cloud cover. When it's not, she too stares, wondering.