Another sonnet on this topic comes from the sequel to Bard Of Mars, entitled View From Earth:

PEDAGOGIC PROTOCOL

Be careful what analogies you use.

Sometimes they are literally taken

and could misrepresent, mislead, confuse,

or trap in a premise that’s mistaken

the very minds that you seek to inform

about the design and nature of things,

and, worse, it could just cause them to conform

to notions false and erred meanderings.

The Big Bang never made a single boom.

Expansion’s not the same as inflation.

The cosmos is not quite like a balloon.

These comparisons need explanation,

or else you convey the wrong perception,

and way off base will be the conception.

“First of all, the Big Bang wasn’t very big. Second of all, there was no bang. Third, Big Bang Theory doesn’t tell you what banged, when it banged, how it banged. It just said it did bang. So the Big Bang theory in some sense is a total misnomer.”

                                                                                                                            –Michio Kaku