Comments on: Darkness

By: Qulog 2.0 » Blog Archive » WASP - Dark physics poetry

Qulog 2.0 » Blog Archive » WASP - Dark physics poetry — Wed, 31 May 2006 14:52:53 +0000

[...] After all the happy flowery spring poems of the past two TASP's, it's time for something else, something dark (it's raining and cold like it's autumn). And because I'm lazy today, I just steal this poem by Lord Byron from Cosmic Variance. I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; [...]

By: Elliot

Elliot — Thu, 25 May 2006 01:48:47 +0000

for an interesting “cosmology” check out this treatise by E. A. Poe from 1848.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/eureka.html

By: Kea

Kea — Sat, 20 May 2006 21:33:17 +0000

Byron is clearly predicting a cyclic universe. For example, A lump of death - a chaos of hard clay … mankind back to clay, from where it came. The faithful dog.

By: Arun

Arun — Sat, 20 May 2006 03:59:09 +0000

Another poem in another universe.

Anyway, off topic, please remove if inappropriate:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38718

By: Pyracantha

Pyracantha — Sat, 20 May 2006 00:39:14 +0000

Byron’s poem, written in 1816, was inspired by the “Year Without a Summer” that was caused by the catastrophic 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. The eruption threw so much dust into the atmosphere that the sun’s light reaching the earth was reduced. The volcano’s climate-cooling effects reached around the world and produced, directly or indirectly, famines and plagues which killed hundreds of thousands of people. It is the closest Earth has come, in recorded history, to the once-popular “nuclear winter” apocalyptic scenario proposed in the 1980’s.

You can read about the poem’s background here at:

http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/EGECTambora.pdf

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Fri, 19 May 2006 22:59:53 +0000

Thanks, Sean, for reminding me of this great poet. Keep in mind, the era of Lord Byron predates the concept of the heat death first proposed by Hermann von Helmhotz in 1854. But - then again - on many occasions the arts precede science.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Fri, 19 May 2006 20:13:24 +0000

That was nice.

But somehow it just couldn’t be as wonderful as the sad reflection of the end of the world by Coleman & de Luccia if we transition into the true vacuum. Now that’s poetic!