The Universe Has On Its Traveling Shoes

They say the universe expands
at about 48 miles/72 kilometers
per second. What's the rush?

The universe never pulls over
to stay in a motel for the night.
It doesn't need a map or GPS

because it's everything, so it
knows where everything is.
It doesn't know where it's

going because it's perpetually
at the end of a road that never
ends, but the universe is going

in the correct direction because
there is no other direction.
When traveling, the universe

never packs light. (It is

light.) It always takes everything

with it, as indeed we often wish to do.



hans ostrom 2020

Quantum Bus Stop

At the bus stop, a man
advised those assembled
in cold rain
that the cells in their bodies
were doing quantum things,
such as disappearing and
appearing at the same time.

"Is it bad reception?" asked
a thin gray woman. "Like
the old days, with TV antennas?"
A young woman wearing
a green hand-knitted cap
said, "I guess everyone
is a physicist today."

The bus appeared, hauling
its exhaustive, Newtonian heft
towards us. "All of its
molecules seem to be
in order," said the young woman.
She put her headphones
on her ears, and I imagined
electrons of music dancing
in her brain. Ups the steel

steps we went, finding our
places in spaces that were
empty in the seats.


hans ostrom 2020

The Schedule of Time and Space

Did space and time arrive at the same
time? Maybe time arrived on time
and space was running late. Or

Space could have been hanging around
waiting for the concept start to start.
And both time and space reported
for duty before the Big Bang, right?

It's all rather enormous and confusing.
I suppose it doesn't matter now, now
that matter is, and is space taking time
to rearrange itself constantly. Anyway,

it can't be any accident that Einstein,
whose schedule included lots of work
with time and space, developed
a comic affect.


hans ostrom 2016

Relatively Astounding

(image, composed of non-local digital particles: Niels Bohr, Danish physicist)





From "A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," by David. Z. Albert and Rivka Galchen, Scientific American, March 2009, p. 32:

"...according to quantum mechanics one can arrange a pair of particles so that they are precisely two feet apart and yet neither particle on its own has a definite position. Furthermore, the standard approach to understanding quantum physics, the so-called Copenhagen intepretation--proclaimed by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr early last century and handed down from professor to student for generations--insists that it is not that we do not know the facts about the individual particles' exact location; it is that there simply aren't any such facts. To ask after the position of a single particle would be as meaningless as, say, asking after the marital status of the number five. The problem is not epistemological (about what we know) but ontological (about what is)."

I will avoid an obvious joke and not say that I found this paragraph particularly interesting, except that I did "say" it, but the location of the joke isn't precisely knowable. That said, or not, physics is starting to sound like theology (the latter defined in the broadest sense). If the facts about the location of particles can't be known, then to what extent do we/can we know anything? Of course, we have to pretend we know, or to "know" on faith. When I walk across a street, my self-interest seems served by my pretending to know where the oncoming automobile traffic is. At the same time, the facts about the reality of that traffic may still be unknowable, even as I live my cross-walk life as if they were knowable.

In other word, Oy!

And if I read that paragraph from SA correctly (and I probably don't), physics is looping back to philosophy, where it began, in a way, with the pre-Socratics, and where it was picked up again by Aristotle, among others, but also by thinkers in other cultural traditions--including Africa and Asia. I regard this as good news--for selfish reasons: physics is more interesting to me when it admits what it can't know, and/or when it comes close to expressing or at least reinforcing amazement. That's partly because I'm a poet and a reader of poet, I suppose. For poets and readers of poets, amazement is a good thing, especially when it springs from the common--like a particle, for example, or a bee (Dickinson liked bees), a wheel barrow (red, if you have one in stock), a river (Langston Hughes), or a hawk (Hopkins).

The third "key concept" highlighted by "The Editors" in a sidebar to the article:

"This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics."

Ouch. I mean, "Cool."

And I was just getting used to how counterintuitive Einstein's theories are in relation to Newtonian physics. To deal with this confusion, I must go read some poetry, which most people (I assume) regard to be about as riveting as theoretical physics.

Hang on to your particles, folks, wherever they're not located.

Light Verse

Light Verse



They tell me light exhibits
the properties of both wave and
particle. So is light particle and
wave, both, or neither? I guess
it's principally indeterminate.
Anyway, I read about this
topic a few times using my
bedside light, the bulb lurking
behind the translucent shade
like the moon behind a thin
layer of clouds. Light's our
daddy, and water's our mama,
or vice versa. It took a while,
but the sun produced Einstein,
for example, and like every
other creature, he got thirsty
after walking in sunshine. Light's
the big mystery which teases
its challengers by illuminating
itself with itself, just as God
gave God an order ("Let there
be Be, if You got a minute") and
followed it it a T. If the way,
whatever that is, isn't the truth,
then it will have to do, and it's
a lot easier to find by light--
or by touch, which sends waves
or particles to the brain. We say
"the power's out" when we lose
our lights, and, brothers and sisters,
that's the truth. Light's the something
from nothing, the lux that leaps
out of nihilo.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008

Bigger Than Large, Smaller Than Tiny

I've always been quite interested in science but also terrible at doing it. In chemistry classes, the math confused me, and when I read "mole," I thought of the underground animal. I was terrible at measuring things--hence I'm one of those intuitive cooks who glances at a recipe and then estimates the measurements. (The professional chefs on TV seem to do the same thing, so I feel vindicated, even as my fare is simpler than theirs.) I didn't like doing experiments that were just exercises, either. I wanted the teacher just to tell us how much sodium was supposed to be left over after the reaction and be done with it--and tell us what the point was.

I read, but do not understand much of, such books as Einstein's Universe, Cosmos, and Hawking's book about the universe. I read Science News with fascination and buy Scientific American at the airport every so often. I like it when scientists tell me more about how things work, although they change their minds a lot. Since I first studied science--after a fashion--in grade school, the universe seems to have gotten a lot bigger, the particles seem to have gotten a lot smaller, and the artist's rendition of what an atom looks like has change completely. Every so often, I have this sneaking suspicion that scientists just make things up, like poets. I mean, how am I going to check up to see if their new drawing of the atom is accurate? I can't ask an atom.

On CNN yesterday, I saw a report about an enormous stream of gamma rays and x-rays leaking out of what they now call a "super black hole." The stream is so enormous that it can wreck a smaller galaxy if it runs into it and, of course, fry any planets in said galaxy. The astronomer said the stream could last another 100 million light years, which he said wasn't a very long time in the context of the life of the universe. CNN showed what it claimed was a picture of the stream. The thing looked like a blue river in space. For all I know, it was photo-shopped. . . .One hundred million years is a "relatively short time"?! And here I was thinking it takes a long time to pick up a package at the post office during the holiday season.

Anyway, a while back I decided to summarize, in a short poem, my sense of the universe, focusing on "units"; of course, the "units" by which scientists measure things seem to change often. I remember when atoms used to be the smallest "building blocks" of matter; it turned out, however, that atoms were made of smaller building blocks, in a manner of speaking. Here is the poem, which I envisage as an extremely short chapter in a "science" book (which makes me think of that guy on NPR who whimsically claimed to have "a Master's Degree--in Science!!"):

Units: An Introduction

by Hans Ostrom

Everything is made
of little units, which
are made of even smaller
units. The smallest units,
undetectable by us, are
reality. All units larger
than these are rearrangement,
illusion, phony structure.
They constitute a kind
of molecular cinema
watched by us and
understood by God,
who is exempt from
the unit-arrangement.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, copyright 2006 Hans Ostrom.

Brains and Branes

Yesterday I made the terrible mistake of purchasing a copy of Scientific American. Actually the purchase was all right (if expensive); the real mistake was to read an article titled, "The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride: Could Cosmic Inflation Be a Sign That Our Universe is Embedded in a Far Vaster Realm?" by Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo (November 2007). This article is all about "string theory," a unified theory of . . . everything, really--the whole physical enchilada, from the universe(s) to particles--although I don't think they use that term, enchilada. Instead the use the following terms:

observable universe--self-explanatory

other universe--"an unobserved region of spacetime" [if you say so!]

calabi-yau--this sounds like the name of an interesting dessert, but it actually refers to a six-dimensional shape; because I am able to visualize only shapes that have a maximum of three dimensions, 6 might as well be 66, as far as I'm concerned. SA tries to illustrate a calabi-yau, but it just looks like a splash of milk: a highly confused three-dimensional space, although I'm sure they were doing their best.

brane--this is short for membrane. Why don't they just say (or write) "membrane"? What's so hard about that?

scalar field--"a field described by a single number at every position. Examples: temperature, inflation field." I guess this means heat as measured by temperature is one slice of the universe.

moduli--I think this would be a good name for a car. "What are you driving these days?" "Well, I'm leasing a Moduli." Instead it refers to "scalar fields that describe the size and shape of hidden space dimensions." Oh, I see. It describes something hidden. If it's really hidden, then how can it be described? Answer: by guessing, under the cover of mathematics. Sez me.

annihilate--no, this doesn't mean what you think it means. It means "to convert completely to radiation." I believe I have done this to dinner a few times, in the oven or on the stove-top.

So I talked with my computer-science/math colleague today in the coffee shop (ah, the perks of being a professor--you can find an expert on the premises), and I said, "I think physics is looping back to philosophy." He said, "It never left philosophy!" I said, "I think these guys are just making stuff up." He smiled. I said, "I can't visualize any of what they're talking about." He said, "You [he meant "one"] can with math. Math can visualize it." Math became very uncomfortable to me after basic algegra and geometry--Euclidean geometry, I should say. I loved that kind of geometry. It made sense, and it seemed to apply to my world, or my "scalar field."

From a philosophical point of view, I approve of the idea of multiple universes, because at least it stalls for time. Otherwise we have to confront the question of what's outside the boundary of this universe. "Nothing" is one answer. To which we respond, "What does nothing look like, and where does it begin, and why does it begin there?" From a theological point of view, heaven could be one of these additional universes. So could hell, but I prefer not to talk about that, and I refuse to make a joke about the "scalar field" of "temperature" with regard to hell. Anyway, with string-theory, we can say, "There's some other stuff on the outside of the universe, and we're going to have a look at it some day, but for now . . . look at the pretty bird!"

Of course, there's also something called an anti-brane. I think it's something that annihilates a brane, but my brain was annihilated by the article, which must be some kind of anti-brane in my case.

My colleague says that string theory is pure theory insofar as it cannot (at the moment) be observed, nor can it make predictions, whereas people were able to make accurate predictions based on Einstein's theories of relativity. One prediction was that the path of light from a distant star (I guess they're all distant, including the sun) would bend when it went past the sun and was observed from Earth. Apparently this was verified during a lunar eclipse of the sun. I don't know if they just eye-balled it or whether they used instruments. :-)

I said, "Well, if you can't observe phenomena, repeat experiments, or make verifiable predictions, then you're not doing science, are you?" My colleague said, "No, and there are books out there that call string theory 'not even wrong'--that is, not even worth trying to disprove." Wow. Beyond wrong. That's pretty bad. That's almost anti-brane.

He recommended a book by Brian Greene called The Fabric of the Universe, which tries to explain string theory, I guess.

Let's talk size for a minute. According to the SA article, the observable universe is this big: 10 to the 26th power meter(s). An ant is 10 to the minus 2 power meter. Presumably an aunt is somewhat larger than that. The minimum meaningful length in "nature" is 10 to the minus 35th. That's a lot smaller than an atom, but don't go by me, because I've never seen an atom all by itself. They seem to travel in packs.

As far as poetry goes (and it seems remarkably similar to physics these days), I can get only as far as Einstein, and really I can't even get that far, but here goes:

Whereabouts Unknown

If I understand Einstein
correctly, and I don’t,
my whereabouts are, strictly
speaking, unknown.

No one is the center of the
universe, but anywhere can be.
Therefore everyone’s coordinates are
contingent, just a song at twilight.

Don’t worry: If I say I’ll be
somewhere at a certain time,
I’ll be then there—unforeseen
whereabouts notwithstanding.

That you know where to find
me, and I you, exemplifies relative
dependability, a feature of our companionship—
love’s old sweet Newtonian song.

from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, by Hans Ostrom.