General Relativity

Einstein’s Field Equation for General Relativity

(Regarding the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s presentation of the complete “Theory of General Relativity” to the Prussian Academy)

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matter tells spacetime to curve
spacetime tells matter to move
gravity tells light to swerve
as Mercury’s sphere was to prove

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“Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, Eddington replied: ‘Who’s the third?”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

Spacetime

“A Rip in Space Time”
Digital Art by David Lane
From fineartamerica.com

curve into the cones
of future/past light-source
those lamps of the present
the life-force of now
whose place and position
no eyes need to validate
here mass and motion
make manifold troth
a mathematical marriage
whose vows recant state
of Euclidian space

together they gravitate
nearer the summa
that ring that is everything
Hawking’s grand postulate
feared more than known
as the event horizon
consuming infinities
tearing identities down
to their quanta while
burning and turning and
rendering all that it captures
forgotten unknowable
wiping its essence from
banks of molecular memory
cosmic and mortal
preventing predictions
of relevant futures

mine is a simple
but curious mind almost
glad four dimensions
elude comprehension
still gladder that Hawking
now turns on his theories
asserting that
black holes no longer
deliver oblivion
paradox neatly resolved
leaving science confused
more than ever
allowing for faithful beliefs
to be ever more certain

Relatively Flawed

Einstein’s Field Equation for General Relativity
Illustration from mysearch.org.uk

the flaw is the bend in the light
gives a curve to our words
no straight shot to the truth
every story subjected to warp
it is gravity steals our perfection
creates a mistrust of all beautiful
judgments injects apprehension
between what we see and we get
perhaps we were better off blind
with Newtonian certainty back before
Einstein first picked up his chalk

Tempus Fugit

“Tempus Fugit”
Painting by Victor de la Fuente
From zelinha-zelinha.blogspot.com

spacemen don’t age the way I did
no doubt due to periods flying
their craft through those fathomless
regions where time itself moves
if at all with the speed of a crawl
preserving their youth for the
length of each astronome mission
while I in my years here upon
terra mundi give chase to the
racing velocipede gears of my
merciless metronome breathless
and running full tilt not a moment
for rest no not even in sleep
is there pause to be found from
this rapidly wrinkling time that
propels me with maddening rush
this whole process of aging
ballistic precipitous hurtling
my human antiquity all in the
relative blink of a powerless eye