The Expanding Universe

Part 1-  

Driving down an open road,

lost among the trees.

The closer they come,

the faster they seem

to approach me--

the parallax:

a change in the angle

as it relates

to the position

from which I see.

And from here

we can measure

the stars closer to us

from those more distant,

regardless of one

shining more brightly.

 

Caught in a curvature

on a cosmic cruiser,

we travel around the sun--

an ordinary star

among billions,

average in size,

glowing yellow in our sky.

A heart, fusing

hydrogen to helium atoms,

set on the edge

of a spiral arm.

We glimpse

only a mere fraction

with the naked eye--

just .0001% of those

formed over time,

gathered on a barred

spiral 

we call the Milky Way.

 

Herschel painstakingly categorized

the stars he could see,

counting pinpricks in the dark,

estimating the size of our galaxy:

100 thousand light-years across,

also rotating, slowly--

each revolution

100 million years apart.

 

Hubble expanded our senses,

envisioning that

in the vast emptiness

we were not alone.

Using indirect methods

he toiled,

measuring luminosities

until nine other galaxies arose.

Our neighbors proved

far-off and remote,

but the Drake Equation

could now be conceived--

with current calculations

of at least 100 billion stars

in each

of the 100 billion galaxies!

 

Upon further observations

we found Stellar Spectra,

a characteristic of having

different chemical elements,

revealing these balls of gas

not to be uniform

nor sharing the same temperaments.

Different colors, sizes,

and temperatures,

emitting varying waves

of thermal radiation--

stars were not only composed

of different atoms,

but their galaxies were

increasingly receding!

 

Through Blackbody Radiation,

Hubble could detect

a shifting pattern

in the light waves

moving to the red end

of the spectrum,

just as one would expect

in a Doppler Effect:

when sound crests

shorten or stretch

depending on the

source's locomotion,

so too do light waves lengthen

the further a galaxy's

remote registration.

This shift,

increasing in proportion

to their distance

charted from our location!

Our universe was spreading out!

These other galaxies were dispersing!

This was not a static universe--

it was a universe expanding!

 

 

Part 2-

 

What seemed to be 
an intellectual revelation
also appeared fitting
within the seams
of General Relativity.

The fudge factor, 
"anti-gravity",
a subtle cosmological constant--
blinded Einstein from this reality
having woven it
into the fabric
of space-time, 
erroneously 
concealing the fact
without expansion 

at a critical rate
gravity 

would have caused us to collapse,
the universe 

to self-annihilate.

Or was this too,
too quick a judgment?
We needed someone
brave enough 
to question it,
to challenge the notions
others had simply accepted.

The stage was set

for our next

physicist mathematician.   

 

Part 3-  

The next installment is coming soon...

 

Part 4-  

The next installment is coming soon...