QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by the wonderfully talented poet and photographer, Buffy Silverman, Here. Please stop by and find out what she’s up to this week.

What is Poetry Friday? Find out HERE.

This week, I’m up to something captivating, at least to me: The Universe!

I’ve had many of my unanswered questions answered, at least partly, and I also have a whole host of new questions since reading FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE, written by robotics scientist, Jorge Cham and physicist Daniel Whiteson. Scientists are sometimes hard to understand, but Cham and Whiteson write with wonderful clarity not to mention wonderful humor. This would be a fun read for high school kids and a must read, in my opinion, for all adults. It is perspective changing:

If you think our solar system is big and we humans are very important, you’ll change those notions fast. If you think the current conversations among some in America is about urgent things, you come to understand see how small many ideas about humanity and our entire culture have become.

Just saying.

The book covers a great deal. For example, it’s given me an appreciation for just how humongous the universe might be and also how far away other possible civilizations might be. How likely is life in other parts of the universe? Have they already been here? Will they want to meet us or not so much?

In this book you’ll find discussions about the possibility of an after life and how that might work. You might come to understand that we are all made up of the same matter, (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc) but our particles are just simply arranged differently. Could this arrangement of a person’s particles be preserved after death and the essence of “You” be transported somewhere else?

Other highlights? Definitely the chapter on Einstein’s relativity equation: Energy is equal to Mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. E=mc2.

What is mass really? I learned to think about things such as a heavy rock differently. I came to understand that a rock’s weight is not due to the sum of all it’s particles, but the ENERGY holding them all together. In fact, we weigh what we weigh because of the bonds holding all of our particles together!

The chair in the corner of your office weighs what it weighs because of energy that binds it’s particles, (such as quarks and electrons) together:

So, if you sit in this chair, you will be held up by energy, (unless of course there is a nail missing or a screw loose.)

Mass is almost entirely Energy. Here is a Golden Shovel poem I wrote from a short quote from the book.

Einstein's Theory of relativity

 ". . . we are luminous beings made of energy." (From Frequently asked Questions about the Universe, by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson.


Because of Einstein, we
find out that we aren’t what we think we are.
Can you sense the luminous
forces that bind molecules inside Human beings
together? Our arms and legs seem made
to appear solid, but we are simply sculpted of 
pure energy. 

© Janice Scully 2023 

This book has been a joy to read! I am about to re-read it because it’s the kind of knowledge I want to remember . . . and maybe because the bonds between my particles aren’t as strong as they used to be? I wonder. Who knows? Maybe they grow stronger after age 30.

Have a great weekend!