Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Looking Wimpy



The stakes for dark matter go beyond cosmology.
The most favored candidates for its identity come
from a theory called supersymmetry, [which] posits
the existence of a realm of as-yet-undiscovered particles.
They would be so-called wimps* — weakly interacting
massive particles — which feel gravity and little else,
and could drift through the Earth like wind through a screen door.


The New York Times, November 25, 2008
"A Whisper, Perhaps, From the Universe’s Dark Side"
Dennis Overbye




Lazy, always hungry, always eating,
Weighty Wimpy's weekly interacting:
He would gladly pay you Tuesday for a
Galaxy-sized hamburger on this day.
In the dark, leaves tricky Wimpy's nonsense,
Innocents who fail to see the pretense.

Seasoned patrons, science's refiners,
Physicists and customers in diners,
Wimpy mystifies both priest and layman.
Hey now: Is he real or is he daemon?
Hamburgers and galaxies sucked in by
Gravitational pulls they can't deny.

   (Nothing more reveals in double-sestet
    This tro·cha'·ic pen'·ta·me'·ter sonnet.)


______________________
* "Dark matter looks to be particularly wimpy" [PDF]
   Nature News, April 19, 2007

for read write poem prompt #54: (not) following the rules
(wherein WIMPs break rules of science and Wimpy breaks rules of good sense)

see also When µWorlds Collide


7 comments:

  1. That's a very cool pun poem thought with hidden depth and hypertext twist.

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  2. Thanks!

    I was thinking at some point I would add another trochaic pentameter sestet (to keep the first one company) and couplet and have a "sonnet".

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  3. Dead good! Love the way you did this and wrapped it neatly!

    There's nothing like this at my local Wimpy bar!

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  4. The problem with wimps is they're likely to be too stringy.
    Super!

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  5. i love thinking about breaking the rules of good sense -- haven't we all done that with galaxy-sized food of some kind or other. of course, and today, being a big-food holiday and all.

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