Tiny Specks

...How small everything is!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist: Gaurav. Licensed under Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.  The original image can be seen at http://lh5.ggpht.com/_qZgEIPGL3_M/Sshgbrqy3tI/AAAAAAAAEHA/9uxKw8ClUA0/quantumuniverse.jpg

 

 

 

Tiny Specks

 

     “Everything is so small…”

 

 

Oh, tiny speck of space and time¹

Adrift in endless seas

How large the world must seem to you--

Stretch to infinity!

 

Oh, tiny speck of hadron² soup

How lonely you must be!

No others near, as you're steeped in

Dilute, electron sea

 

Oh, tiny speck of iron³ and stone

And blue with azure seas

You are but dust--I smaller still

You once seemed big to me

 

And you’re ' speck, too--you isle of stars⁴

Pinwheel of heaven’s seas

With telescope--not microscope--

For you, eye strains to see

 

And tiny speck--you Universe⁵

Afloat yet greater seas!

Oh yes, it's true! All things are small--

A wonderment to me

 

 

©2010 Richard Puetter

All rights reserved

 

 

Notes

 

¹At the finest scales, space and time are quantized into a roiling sea of particles of space-time.  These particles are of the smallest size and duration that make sense to talk about physically.  They are the Planck time and Planck length, 5.39x10^-44 seconds and 1.62x10^-35 meters, respectively.

 

²Hadrons are particles, such as a protons and neutrons, that are made up of quarks and held together by the Strong Nuclear Force.  So we’re talking about an atomic nucleus, here.  If we assume we’re talking about a hydrogen atom, the proton has a roughly exponentially decaying charge distribution with an RMS radius of roughly 8.77x10^-16 meters.  The electron cloud surrounding it is roughly the size of the Bohr radius (5.29x10^-11 meters), or roughly 100,000 times larger than the size of the nucleus.  This is also about as close as another nucleus can come to another atom’s nucleus in a molecule as atomic bonds are of roughly this size.  So a nucleus is alone and really sitting in a dilute sea of electrons.  To keep track of our jumps in scale in this poem, a hydrogen atom is roughly 10²⁴ times (a 1 followed by 24 zeros) larger than the finest division of space-time.

 

³The earth has a molten iron core.  The earth’s radius is roughly 6.4x10⁶ meters--the Earth is not perfectly spherical, the poles being flattened relative to the equator.  So the Earth is roughly 10²² times bigger than a proton.

 

⁴The Milky Way galaxy, the home of our solar system, is a giant barred spiral galaxy, one of the largest kinds of galaxies.  There is only one other giant spiral in the Local Group of 20 or so galaxies, and that is Andromeda.  The rough radius of the Milky Way is 50,000 light years, or about 4.73x10²⁰ meters.  So it is about 10¹⁴ times bigger than the Earth.

 

⁵The Age of the Universe is now known (to 1% accuracy) to be 13.7 billion years old.  So that also gives the size of the Universe to be 13.7 billion light years, or roughly 1.3x10²⁶ meters, making it roughly 3x10⁵ times larger than the Milky Way.  So the size scale spanned in this poem is from the Planck length to the radius of the Universe or roughly a 10⁶¹ times change in scale.  Now, of course, we’re not really done. Most physicists today believe the Universe is just a tiny “bubble” in some larger, multi-dimensional reality.  How big is that?  Well the question is not even really appropriate since we can’t even properly define what we mean by “size” on this “otherness” of existence.  Our concepts simply fail.  But if we could make some proper definitions, I am confident that we’d find our universe to be an incredibly small speck.

Reviews

[Great Aunt Astri]

This poem really reads well. Lovely rhythm which keeps you wanting to know more.
When I was young the boys used to say that the universe was in someone's test tube. I argued that if we were in someone's test tube then they must be in someone's even bigger test tube, and so on ad infinitum. But thank goodness that the world is big enough for us to write poems.

[Shellie]

I absolutely loved this poem. It was so well written with great flow and an excellent theme.

[Legion]

Oh, love the pic you provided with it as well. Goes good together.

[Legion]

Once again, you have mastered the interpretation of life and its true relevance. This reminds me of my piece "I Am...Dust" a bit (but much better). I love this piece and its depiction of what truly makes this universe what it is. It reads really well while listening to Lunatic Soul's new album "Lunatic Soul II". I'm sure it would go well with their first album as well. Kudos on a fine and finite write. ;)

[Brianna Brie]

This is an unusual and intriguing write. I enjoyed the lesson and your delightful words.

[Mark]

This caused me to remember a question I posed one of my high school teachers, who had just poo-poohed the Bohr and Rutherford models. When I asked what lay between the "energy shells" and the nucleus, and he was able to answer only, "Nothing that we've as yet discovered, but the relative distances are enormous!", I could only respond, "So, then, everything is really mostly NOTHING?" Further than that, the philosophers will have to go!
But in your usual and inimitable fashion, you have taken the incomprehensible, and made it approachable, and in beautiful fashion.
Noted that four of the five stanzas had "seas" as their second line ender. Pity you couldn't come up with a seas-themed line for St. 2 Perhaps "afloat in string-filled seas"? (That may be absurd, as I know less than nothing about string theory!). Just a thought...
Love you, friend! Mark

[emmajoy]

Rick, you've done it again, you've struck me dumb - and that takes some doing as you well know!

What a wonderful flow of words describing what is virtually indescrable .. the endless out there displayed in an almost simple manner, yet within a fine literary style, meter perfect and words wed in harmony:

'Oh, tiny speck of hadron soup ~ How lonely you must be! ~ No others near, as you're steeped in ~ Dilute, electron sea'

Your notes are fascinating, just wish my brain could take in the details, especially ' Most physicists today believe the Universe is just a tiny “bubble” in some larger, multi-dimensional reality. How big is that? Well the question is not even really appropriate since we can’t even properly define what we mean by “size” on this “otherness” of existence. Our concepts simply fail. But if we could make some proper definitions, I am confident that we’d find our universe to be an incredibly small speck.'

Thank you for inviting me to read this wonderful poem and for luring me yet again into a world that exists into more than infinity .

[Ellen Hammond]

Oh Rick, only you could condense the universe into a lovely, rather short (for you) poem. Glimpsing the universe from your perspective really makes me realize how extremely minute we are in the scheme of things. This is a very enjoyable read. I must admit I have never enjoyed a science lesson as much as your poems. Thank you for sharing your amazing work.

[alesuriko]

A detailed and very enjoyable way of expressing how even the largest things in our universe are actually rather tiny and small. The way you write doesn't make everything seem insignificant because of how small it actually is, but rather it makes everything more relatable and personal. It's a both enlightened / philosophical poem and a scientific poem. It combines thought and fact in such a poetic way that it is very enjoyable to read. Especially with the rhyme, word choice, and the footnotes that clarify terms for people who are unfamiliar with the terms you've used. However, your terms aren't so abstract and scientific that people would be without a clue if you didn't supply the footnotes. Very well written and I especially love how all your footnote references are in the first line of each stanza, possibly coincidence but an interesting pattern nonetheless. Well done, sir.