Planck's Verse

PLANCK'S VERSE

From under Euclid's hat
Where space is very flat
The points dance out to anchor skeins of lines
Forming abstract mediums
Subservient to axioms,
Hypotheses and theorems that underlie designs
Which articulate extensions
Of the classical dimensions
Where the ideal and the concrete intertwines.

But something misty-hazy,
A modicum quite crazy,
Infected lines selected parallel.
It was hard to put your finger
On the doubts that tend to linger,
But they rang an alien brass bell.
When scrutinized with rigor

They simply wouldn't figure -
A discord most difficult to quell.

With the grace of an Eglevski
Along came Lobachevski.
He'd an eye to Euclid's parallel device.
By combing suppositions
He discovered new conditions
To make the general precise.
With Riemann he played games
With mathematic aims
And invigorated space with new spice.

Einstein looked at Newton's space.
He measured to the millionth place
And discovered something really wasn't right.
At orders of high magnitude
He found old concepts came unglued,
Especially at speeds close to light.
"The problem is," he had to state,
"Space is really not quite straight
But somehow strangely slickly subtly skewed."

How it's curved, he could not say.
It could be almost any way
Dependent on the mass proximity.
It needed no great miracle
For fourth dimension spherical
But then, in equanimity,
Theories deployed
Hyperbolic paraboloid
Held truth in anonymity.


"This space", he said, "I must
Most radically adjust
By fusing it confusingly with time.
So that the present, past and future
Are joined in special spacial suture.
Not in plan Satanic nor sublime."
Since time is also space
In each and every case,
We should call it tace or, maybe spime.

But events within this framework
Became, no longer, tame work.
The kingdom of the random becomes rife.
Uncertainty is certainty,
Will becomes insanely free,
And God is playing craps with your life.
So, if you are late for dinner,
You no more are a sinner.

Modern physics will explain it to your wife.