Poem: The Warped Side of Our Universe

Cortez Deacetis

Edited by Dava Sobel

A billion several years in the past
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   —while in this article on Earth
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   multicelled existence was arising and spreading—
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in a galaxy considerably significantly absent
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   two spinning black holes danced ’round one a different,
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   rippling the fabric of space and time.

The ripples, known as gravity waves
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   sucked strength from the holes’ orbit, so
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The holes spiraled inward,
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   eclipsing every other,
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   toward a climactic collision:

The holes,
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   at fifty percent of gentle pace,
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   collided catastrophically
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     and merged
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        in a short, cataclysmic storm
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        of writhing and twisting spacetime
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   that introduced the waves to crescendo.

The climaxing gravity waves
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   surged into interstellar space.
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Spreading across our universe,
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     they stretched and they squeezed
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        all that they achieved
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        (stars and planets and nebulae…)
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     in designs that encoded
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        a portrait of their beginning:
colliding holes and spacetime storm.

The gravity waves have been hugely sturdy,
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   with fifty times extra full ability
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   —more luminosity—
   than all of the mild from all of the stars in all of our universe, mixed.

Fifty universe luminosities
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   from two black holes colliding.
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But not any light-weight. Not any x-rays. Not any gamma rays or radio.
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   No electromagnetic waves at all,
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      None of any type.

Fifty universe luminosities
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   carried wholly and exclusively by gravity waves,
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   by tendices and vortices, entwined,
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   by buildings created from warped spacetime.

Fifty thousand decades ago,
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   when people shared Earth with Neandertals,
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the waves plunged into our galaxy:
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   The Milky Way. Our home.

On September fourteen of 20 fifteen
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   they dove into Earth in Antarctica.
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Whispering up by Earth’s bowels unscathed,
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   and rising around New Orleans,
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     the waves encountered LIGO
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        —a sophisticated and massive, L-formed product
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          designed and developed to understand them.

In LIGO the gravity waves stretched and squeezed
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   two very long beams of light-weight,
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which extracted the portraits the waves encoded:
   colliding holes and spacetime storm.

A momentous Eureka Event, it was
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humans’ initially second of get hold of
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   with the Warped Side of Our Universe.

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