Comin’ Your Way

COMIN’ YOUR WAY Look out, Ophiuchus, Voyager’s here! Earth has randomly shot some gold your way. We hope our sounds and music suit your ear and you’ll get back to us without delay. The complete instructions are included for how to hook it up to get your tunes. Note that if depiction seems deluded, we […]

ONE PARADISE

ONE PARADISE One molecule was life’s first ancestor. This may be true, but no one knows for sure. The double helix seems essential for what we call life to survive and endure. Evolving from one strand of DNA when amino acids were lightning struck, life reproduced itself in an array of forms from this […]

COLD COMFORT

COLD COMFORT When life on this planet seems cumbersome and weighted with serious magnitude, delight dragged down by deep opprobrium, I pad into the kitchen for some food. In front of the refrigerator, I see tacked with tacky magnets your sweet face, in photographs that we took last July, and what was crushing becomes an […]

SENSE OF REALTY

SENSE OF REALTY We think one day we’ll find another Earth encircling some other distant sun. It won’t be like the planet of our birth. not one can stand up to comparison. If lucky, we’ll find one that’s the right mass — not to crush us with its gravitation — with atmosphere made of breathable […]

OUMUAMUA, DAGGER OF DEATH

OUMUAMUA (1I/2017U1) Dagger of Death Oumuamua, dagger from space, is flung at its target end over end – too fast for any rocket to outpace. Earth, spun within the Sun’s disc, can’t defend against this object just recently spied (though it is the size of a football field) – a blade ten times as […]

Interwoven Designs

INTERWOVEN DESIGNS We live due to a natural balance of elemental forces and charges so intricate that we have not yet deciphered their pattern. Only on this wet and rocky sphere with a magnetic core only at this distance from a moderate, long burning star, protected by our cratering moon, and sheltered by outer giants, […]

The Nurture Of Nature

THE NURTURE OF NATURE We think we can preserve the life we see by simply storing it genetic’ly, or in museums of taxidermy or zoos, that almost let it wander free. An animal that’s caged might perform stunts But wont display natural behavior the tiger that is fed no longer hunts, and the zookeeper is […]

View From Earth

Sequel to BARD OF MARS INVOCATION Ubiquitous, therefore hard to assess, an elegant complexity is found, quite dauntingly difficult to express, innately lavish, vibrantly unbound. From forest to the desert or the sea, from far or in a microscopic view, at any scale, it works exquisitely, and wonder, awe and reverence are its due. Fit […]

Topping The Star Charts

Happy 40th Anniversary to Voyagers 1 & 2! Almost out of the solar system, traveling faster than anything else man has ever built, soon (in an astronomical sense) you will announce our presence to the rest of the intelligent universe (if it exists). You are our first spacecraft unable to ask, “Are we there yet?” […]

Rock Garden

Ask a geologist about rocks, and she (or he) might tell you about sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous, then describe their differences based upon how they were formed. The fact is that everything heavier than air was formed in the same way — in the interior of mega-stars, fated to explode. We may be considered stardust, but we […]