Poem: The Warped Side of Our Universe
Edited by Dava Sobel
A billion several years in the past

—while in this article on Earth

multicelled existence was arising and spreading—

in a galaxy considerably significantly absent

two spinning black holes danced ’round one a different,

rippling the fabric of space and time.
The ripples, known as gravity waves

sucked strength from the holes’ orbit, so

The holes spiraled inward,

eclipsing every other,

toward a climactic collision:
The holes,

at fifty percent of gentle pace,

collided catastrophically

and merged

in a short, cataclysmic storm

of writhing and twisting spacetime

that introduced the waves to crescendo.
The climaxing gravity waves

surged into interstellar space.

Spreading across our universe,

they stretched and they squeezed

all that they achieved

(stars and planets and nebulae…)

in designs that encoded

a portrait of their beginning:
colliding holes and spacetime storm.
The gravity waves have been hugely sturdy,

with fifty times extra full ability

—more luminosity—
than all of the mild from all of the stars in all of our universe, mixed.
Fifty universe luminosities

from two black holes colliding.

But not any light-weight. Not any x-rays. Not any gamma rays or radio.

No electromagnetic waves at all,

None of any type.
Fifty universe luminosities

carried wholly and exclusively by gravity waves,

by tendices and vortices, entwined,

by buildings created from warped spacetime.
Fifty thousand decades ago,

when people shared Earth with Neandertals,

the waves plunged into our galaxy:

The Milky Way. Our home.
On September fourteen of 20 fifteen

they dove into Earth in Antarctica.

Whispering up by Earth’s bowels unscathed,

and rising around New Orleans,

the waves encountered LIGO

—a sophisticated and massive, L-formed product

designed and developed to understand them.
In LIGO the gravity waves stretched and squeezed

two very long beams of light-weight,

which extracted the portraits the waves encoded:
colliding holes and spacetime storm.
A momentous Eureka Event, it was

humans’ initially second of get hold of

with the Warped Side of Our Universe.
