Expectations
Our fabulous flying wheel galaxy
plows head-first through intergalactic space.
Seven thousand mile per minute taxi
bound for the Virgo Cluster's misty trace.
Our Sun bounces on gravity's tether,
speck in a collective starry flower.
Astrophysicists predict fair weather
ahead, half a million miles per hour.
A quarter of a billion year trip
carries Earth once around the Milky Way.
We plummet through the thick and thin of it;
gas pockets, dust clouds, Spiral arms' melee.
Our present course is relatively clear
and beyond the Oort Cloud's icy comets
the solar wind of our heliosphere
expands to shield the inner planets.
The latest figures confirm we'll be fine;
asteroid Apophis will zip past soon,
on April thirteenth, twenty twenty-nine
and miss by one-tenth the span to the Moon.
The odds of cataclysmic collapse
of universal ‘false' to ‘true' vacuum
are one in a trillion perhaps.
Such an occurrence would radiate doom.
The galaxy is aswarm with black holes,
as many as one hundred billion,
but the chance of meeting these light-limned coals
is reckoned one in a quadrillion.
Last, we've four billion years to prepare
for Andromeda's insistent advance,
but life, wherever it dwells won't despair
as our galaxies gracefully dance.
Gulf of the interstellar medium
teems with miscellaneous cosmic threats.
Astrophysicists counter tedium
by cataloguing them and making bets.
BUT, through my premonitory portal
I see a quantum loopy half-dead cat
throw dice with a sad redundant turtle.
I don't expect they'll be expecting that.
poem by Diane Hine
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Galaxy Song
When youre feeling inside out and insecure,
and life keeps getting you down.
When all lifes daily worrieshurry through your head.
You dont want to even get up.
You just lie around in bed.
When you feel you just cant take it anymore
And you wonder what on earth it is all foryour love lifes like a war zone
Your tvs on the blinkits enough to drive a drinking man to stop and take a
Think
just remember that you standing on a planet thats evolving,revolving at 900
Miles an hour.its orbiting at 19 miles a second, so its reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day.
In an outer spiral orb, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the milky way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
Its a 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us its just 3,000 light years wide.
Were 30,000 light years from galactic central point.
We go round every 200,000,000 years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, 12,000,000 miles a minute,
And thats the fastest speed there is!
So, remember when youre feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth.
And pray that theres intelligent life somewhere up in space,
cause Im afraid that weve been cheated here on earth.
song performed by by Clint Black
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Flyng At Night
five billion years away
a planet turns,
turning a million years
this side of the planet
and my heart beats
each beats
a million years
the other side of another planet
the distance that shortens
the years
as we watch a foreign body
five billion years away
a billion years passed
a universe caught in time
an eagle flaps its wing
each flag
a million years pass
that side of the planet
time is where you are
it walks away from you
as you walk away from it
inspired by
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Ted Kooser
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Our Times
Our Times
13.7 billion years ago
4.5 billion years ago
3.5 billion years ago
200 thousand years ago
10,000 years ago
5000 years ago
3500 years ago
1800 years ago
500 years ago
50 years ago
One hundred years from now
Five hundred years from now
Ten million years from now
Ten billion years from now
We are where we are now
Where are we now?
Who are we now?
What will we be?
When?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Cosmic Girl
I must've died and gone
to heaven
Cos it was a quarter
past eleven
On a Saturday in 1999
Right across from where
I'm standing
On the dance floor she
was landing
It was clear that she
was from another time
Like some baby Barbarella
With the stars as her umbrella
She asked me if I'd
like to magnetise
Do I have to go star-trekking
Cos it's you I should
be checking
So she lazer beamed me
with her cosmic eyes
(Refrain)
She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
My heart's at zero gravity
She's from a cosmic world
Putting me in ecstasy
Transmitting on my frequency
She's cosmic
I'm scanning all my radars
Well she said she's
from a quasar
Forty thousand million
light years away
It's a distance solar systems
I tried to phone but
they don't list 'em
So I asked her for a
number all the same
She said
song performed by by Jamiroquai
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.
quote by Carl Sagan
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Universal Gallows (War)
Washington and London, conquerors proud
penitents, Earth’s perturbation cowed.
Your torn ingested satellites held -
so much interstellar molecules
for mighty spiral galaxies to meld.
A hundred billion arms swirl and pull
your million killed, your hegemonic rules.
Men’s courts a gravity shallows
false prophets beyond human gallows
but judgement, a constants universal -
the proton, neutron, and justice, no rehearsal
man’s victor’s justice, a shame unique.
Our big bang dies of cold regret
only to rebirth, in life’s spasm.
So hungary for critical mass, yet
refuses recycle in star plasma
your volatile words, your sensous gas.
It fearful of spirit tainted matter
in cyclical space’s elastic
for zygote galaxies, chiasmata.
So justice delayed but doesn’t matter
the cosmos itself purges you -
all death decayed and atoms shattered
your energy red shifted splatter.
Vous profane, sin of stigmata!
poem by Philip Housiaux
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Space Dust Laced With Moon Rocks
I Travel Down Equestrian Roads
Where Worthy and Worthless Have Traveled
Upon Intrinsic Cobblestones
Take Flight Within Winds and Clouds
Smoke permeated from his mouth
forming constellations
The Cold Leaving Me Breathless
Crystals Formed On The Edges
Lashes Freezing and Wings
Spread Constructed In Mythological Strength
Elevating Past the Sun and Entering Beside The Moon
I Flew To The Highest Possible Attitude
Bouncing in The Midst of Virgo-nian and Ursa Constellations
Residing on Spica I Travel Telepathically
Conversations With Outer Beings
Echoing Through Weightless Gravity
I lean up and swirl
Orion into Andromeda
Cruisin' on a super nova
with a push from Sagittarius
I inhale space dust
laced with moon rocks
Swimming upon The Milky Way
Mind Open Flashing Thoughts
Swaying Like Meteors
Switching To Andromeda
No Longer Enclosed
Mind-blowing Galaxy
Visible Lights Reach Cornea
Ticks Hypothalamus
Slowly Opening Soaking In
Super Nova Starry Eyed
Elliptically Elated
On Universe Islands
Princess of Ink Floating
Within The Galaxy
Neutron Star Cells
Electrically Smooth
Minds Are Like PARACHUTES
Functioning Only When Open
Slow MOTIONED Instances of
Satellite Soliloquies Arrive
To Itched Fingertips
Grappling Planetary Rings
And Converting Them Into Verses
Venus Calling...To
Vivaciously Vafrous
Vocabs
Vindicating Versute
Verbomania
Intergalactic-ly Volant
I Remain Traveling
Within Silver Lakes
and Red Skies
As I Pen Words on
Canvas Like Black Holes
and Swirl Amongst Planets
By Samantha Campbell
poem by Samantha Campbell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Spec Of Dust
In the middle of the night,
Im lying in your bed.
Thinking of you and me in the universe.
Stars are moving like the night we met,
The earth is turning like the time we said.
In my mind Im searching for you, billion miles away.
Why do I miss you so if youre just a spec of dust,
Floating endlessly amongst the billion stars?
Knowing that one day we may float apart,
Meeting each other in memories.
Why do I love you so if youre just a spec of dust,
Floating endlessly amongst the trillion stars?
Knowing that one day we may float apart,
Meeting each other in universe.
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Spec Of Dust
In the middle of the night,
Im lying in your bed.
Thinking of you and me in the universe.
Stars are moving like the night we met,
The earth is turning like the time we said.
In my mind Im searching for you, billion miles away.
Why do I miss you so if youre just a spec of dust,
Floating endlessly amongst the billion stars?
Knowing that one day we may float apart,
Meeting each other in memories.
Why do I love you so if youre just a spec of dust,
Floating endlessly amongst the trillion stars?
Knowing that one day we may float apart,
Meeting each other in universe.
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.
Carl Sagan in Cosmos
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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Love In Star Burst Breathes
with universal wonder
sail solar winds seed
love in star burst breathes
arching out spanning across
interstellar womb light space
dancing web cosmic stories
with universal wonder
embrace creation light seed
love into all life at light
speed too slow too slow seed
love into all life at thought
speed instant crosses solar systems
galaxy universe in an instant
in time crosses multi universes
in an instant of time love seeds
sent reach all receptive hearts
instantly love has no time to waste
sing bliss into multiple worlds
of life loving universal wonder
God is love love is transpermia life
love is life intergalactic thunder
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Nine Billion Names Of God
Once nine billion names of God were known
the world would end, the monks declared.
When scientists transferred them from a stone
on which He’d written them, they then compared
these names to those of all the stars astronomers
had managed to discover, and thus found
a proof their names were all eponymous,
based on a God, who out of sight and sound,
left traces in the starry sky that He
exists, the Founder of the universe.
Once this was known, they could no longer see
the stars, which He extinguished with a curse,
because although He challenges us to know
His names, He does not want us to find out
precisely where the trees of knowledge grow,
because His universe is based on doubt.
Dennis Overbye (“A Boy’s Life, Guided by the Cosmic Wonder, ” NYT, March 25,2007) writes about the science fiction writer and space visionary, the co-creator with Stanley Kubrick of the classic 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Overbye, who was greatly influenced by Clarke’s writings which he describes as the ultimate reason why he ended up becoming an MIT graduate, reports that a supernova exploded in the constellation Boötes on the day of Clarke’s death:
It was the remains of a cataclysmic explosion, a gamma-ray burst, that must have torched a galaxy seven billion light-years away, around the curve of the cosmos, as Clarke might have put it. Nobody knows if there could have been somebody or something living there, when the universe was half its present age. When I heard about it I couldn’t help thinking about Clarke’s Jesuit and the star of Bethlehem. Whoever or whatever was there now belongs to the ages. Darkness has now reclaimed that spot in the sky.
Overbye also writes:
In his short story “The Nine Billion Names of God, ” published in 1953, Clarke wrote of a pair of computer programmers sent to a remote monastery in Tibet to help the monks there use a computer to compile a list of all the names of God. Once the list was complete, the monks believed, human and cosmic destiny would be fulfilled and the world would end. The programmers are fleeing the mountain, hoping to escape the monks’ wrath when the program finishes and the world is still there, when one of them looks up. “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
3/25/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies... We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.
quote by Stephen Hawking
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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The truth, of course, is that a billion falsehoods told a billion times by a billion people are still false.
quote by Travis Walton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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You are like an alien
Your behavior has hurt me so much
My mind has exploded like a supernova
The scattered emotions are turning into poetry
Revolving around you my star like planets and comets
Your beauty has impressed me so much
My love has turned into something like a nebula
That is giving birth to lust's light like newborn stars
Your make-believe has made me believe
That true love really exists in this dreary world
And gives me light in the darkness like distant quasars
Every now and then the fights with you
Has turned you into something like a black hole
Now you are invisible to me but attract me ever more
You are like a sweet dream in the dreadful night
But it will not come true in this life coz you are like an alien
In the 2.5 million light-years away from earth Andromeda galaxy
poem by Asif Andalib
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people.
quote by Samantha Bee
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Galaxies
Averting my vision
I can see the smudge
Of a billion or more suns,
Many light years away.
They have telescopes as well, I think,
And I might blush in this torpid state;
For I am an ant-
They have fortresses of clarity.
The night moves on,
So I swing to another galaxy.
This one is in collision-
What suffering there must be.
If I stare into the blank regions
Of space, calmly in tune,
The chirping of earth-life all around,
I will only see the back of my head.
poem by Stan Petrovich
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Flying at Night
lost in the universe
counting stars
hurtling through space
this spaceship
for six billion years
shunting through
crevices, corners
dark as the dark sky
the stars its guiding light
from corner to corner
this realm ever expanding
casting mysteries of its origin, vastness
only one or two manage to touch
its workings in figures and letters
einstein leading the pack
but the spaceship waits for no man
the realm waits for no one
every sphere expanding
moving us to somewhere
the corner of our mind
the corner of the realm
inspired by
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Ted Kooser
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Come To The Moon
Come to the moon
By: jimmy buffett, michael utley, will jennings
1984
Full earth tonight
And mars is big and bright
All our friends are flying in
Its such a lovely sight
Gravity never could hold me
That is what you always told me
You know me
Chorus:
So come to the moon
I hope to see you soon
Half a million miles isnt far to go
You know I need you so
I hope you still need me
So come to the moon
The starships leaving soon
Until then Im wishing on every star
That you will be here soon
Come to the moon
Those crazy martian days
When we went separate ways
Through time and space wed find a place
To bring our lives in phase
Were lost amid the galaxies revolving
And were all just a part of whats evolving
Evolving
Chorus:
So come to the moon
I hope to see you soon
Half a million miles isnt far to go
You know I need you so
I hope you still need me
So come to the moon
The starships leaving soon
Until then Im wishing on every star
Wondering where you are
Come to the moon
Chorus:
So come to the moon
I hope to see you soon
Half a million miles isnt far to go
You know I need you so
I hope you still need me
So come to the moon
The starships leaving soon
Until then Im wishing on every star
That you will be here soon
Come to the moon
Come to the moon
Come to the moon
song performed by by Jimmy Buffett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Billions Billions Alive Today
Officially half of all the human beings
who have ever lived are alive today.
The entire population of all human history
an equivalent of all humans who ever lived.
Half entire human race who were ever born
are alive on earth now living on earth today.
Asia China India regionally 2.5 billion alive today
in fifty years Asian population will double triple?
In fifty years planet earth will need to produce more
food than has presently by humans ever been eaten?
Are these food figures statistics not impossible odds?
Famine pestilence war pandemics what future awaits?
Will compassion seeds flower in collective soul humanity?
poem by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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