User:Richard A Muller/poem

The Creation

a scientist's myth

At first there is nothing

no earth, no sun

no space, no time

nothing

Time begins

and the vacuum explodes, erupts

from nothing, filled with fire

everywhere

furiously hot and bright

Fast as light, space grows,

and the firestorm grows

weaker. Crystals appear

droplets

of the very first matter. Strange matter

fragile bits

a billionth of the universe

overwhelmed in turbulence

of no importance

they seem

as they wait

for the violence to subside

The universe cools and the crystals shatter

and shatter again,

and again and again

until they can shatter no more. Fragments

electrons, gluons, quarks,

grasp at each other, but are burned back apart

by the blue-white heat, still far too hot

for atoms to endure

Space grows, and the fire diminishes

to white to red to infrared

to darkness.

A million year holocaust has passed.

Particles huddle in the cold and bind themselves

into atoms -- hydrogen, helium, simple atoms

from which all else is made.

-21- Drawn by gravity, the atoms gather

and divide

and form clouds of all sizes

stars and galaxies

of stars, clusters of galaxies. In the void

there is empty space

for the first time.

In a small star cloud, a clump of cool matter

compresses and heats

and ignites

and once again there is light.

Deep within a star, nuclei

are fuel and food, burning and cooking

for billions of years, fusing

to carbon and oxygen and iron, matter of life

and intelligence, born slowly, buried

trapped

deep within a star

Burned and burdened, a giant star's heart

collapses. Convulses. A flash. In seconds

energy from gravity, thrown out

overheats, explodes, ejects

the shell of the star. Supernova! Growing brighter

than a thousand stars. Still brighter, brighter

than a million stars, a billion stars, brighter

than a galaxy of stars. Cinders of carbon, oxygen, iron

expelled into space

escape

free! They cool and harden

to dust, the ashes of a star

the substance of life

In Milky Way galaxy at the edge of Virgo Cluster

(named five billion years later, for a mother),

the dust divides and gathers and begins to form

a new star. Nearby a smudge of dust begins to form

a planet. The young sun

compresses, and heats

and ignites

and warms the infant earth

by Richard A. Muller

this poem was made by me. User:Richard A Muller