Limericks

A Brief History of Gravity
by Bruce Elliott

It filled Gallileo with mirth
To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,
"Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!"

Then Newton announced in due course
His own law of gravity's force:
"It goes, I declare,
As the inverted square
Of the distance from object to source."

But remarkably, Einstein's equation
Succeeds to describe gravitation
As spacetime that's curved,
And it's this that will serve
As the planets' unique motivation.

Yet the end of the story's not written;
By a new way of thinking we're smitten.
We twist and we turn,
Attempting to learn
The Superstring Theory of Witten!

Astronomers were full of emotions
Trying to predict orbital motions.
Copernicus solved the riddle:
He put the Sun in the middle,
And laid to rest all the other old notions.

Johannes Kepler's First Law was this:
Orbits aren't round, but ellipse.
With the Sun at one foci,
The planets do fly by
And achieve harmonious bliss.

Elliptical orbits were still on his mind,
So the Second Law he quickly devined:
When plotting their motion,
He got the notion
Of equal area in equal time.

The Third Law is hard to discuss;
But understand it we must.
When two planets are compared,
The ratio of their periods squared
Is the cube of their orbital radius.

Isaac Newton sat under a tree
When an apple began to come free.
As he started to duck,
He said, "Doesn't that suck?
Or maybe it's just gravity."

Newton's telescope was a disaster,
He hated his lens-filled refractor.
Upon reflection, he said,
"I'll try this instead,
I'll make one with mirrors, its faster."

William Herschel worked hard in the night.
For discovering Uranus, he became a knight.
But his nebulae catalog
Made astronomers all agog,
And even today, it causes delight.

There once was a fellow named Percival;
An astronomer most unmerciful.
But instead of the stars,
He kept looking at Mars,
And thought that canals were detectable.

Einstein was known for creativity,
And replied, when asked about gravity,
"Energy equals mass multiplied
By the square of the speed of light;
I call it my Theory of Relativity."

There was a professor named Sagan,
Who pondered how life did begin.
"From the stars we did come,
And when we are done,
Our death will be another's origin."

Hawking couldn't walk, it is true.
But his brain needed something to do.
So he thought about mass,
And collapsed balls of gas,
And his reputation sure grew.

Galileo built a telescope of brass
And peered at Jupiter through his spyglass.
He sat there astounded,
Four moons were around it!
He was going to be famous at last!

In youth, his hair grew like a weed,
But Old Hubble was balding, indeed.
"I know that I ought
To make this constant a naught,
Then my hairline will never recede."
    - Devlin Gualtieri

William Herschel was no ignoramus
Convinced now he would become famous
"Oh, to bed!" Mary sighed
Her mood ruined when he cried,
"But I've just found some rings round Uranus!"
    - Mike Clark

There once was a Bell engineer
Named Jansky, who had a good ear.
When The Archer was high,
His radio would cry.
"It's coming from space!" he would cheer.

For years, Brahe sat down in one spot;
Orbital positions, he decided to plot.
He was able to pin it
To within an arcminute,
And helped the astronomers a lot.

There was an astronomer named Fred.
"The Universe is curved," he said.
"And my scope has such power
That I've spent the last hour
Observing the back of my head."
   - Author Unknown

I was watching the heavens one night
When I glimpsed an object quite bright
The meteor streaked down
Without making a sound,
And promptly disappeared out of sight.

There once was a comet called LINEAR
As bright as Praesepe, but skinnier.
It broke up one day,
In a fragmentary way,
And now it can't be found anywhere.

A Black Hole's mouth is always agape;
From it, not even light can escape.
For a while, hit-and-miss,
Now, they're known to exist,
And folks are all bent out of shape.

Our Sun is a hot ball of gas
Which has a medium mass.
It will someday explode
When it grows old,
And will become a White Dwarf, alas.

Our galaxy's a glorious sight.
Millions of stars help to make it shine bright.
Called the Milky Way,
It's gone during the day,
But shows up real nicely at night.

M42 is a nebula grand;
It has a shape like a fan.
Inside are four suns
That make the Trapezium,
Each sparkling like dew on the sand.

The Moon reflects the Sun's light;
When Full, it can really be bright.
Astronomers prefer it New,
Else it washes out their view
Of the fainter objects at night.

There landed a creature from Venus
Whose species was quite a strange genus.
It said to the crowds,
"We're covered in clouds --
And that's why nobody has seen us."

There was a young Martian named Glyfe,
Who thought that the Earth might have life.
But his colleagues all said
That the planet was dead;
"Its air can't be cut with a knife."

It's a terrible shock to ones Soul
To fall headlong inside a Black Hole
For that nasty descent
Leaves one thinned out and rent,
Then flambéed on ultra-hot coal.
    - Neil McLellan

Are all singularities real?
Or is it just physicists spiel?
Perhaps Standard Model
But is it all twaddle?
Its point is its Achilles Heel.
    - Neil McLellan

Should we trust in the new Planet 9
Even though it's so hard to define?
For out there near the Oort
It's so hectic and fraught
Don't the orbits just clash and entwine?
    - Neil McLellan

The night was as clear as could be.
I ran inside, yelling "Yippee!"
I came back out with my scope,
Set it up like a dope
And noticed the sky had turned cloudy.

There once was an astronomer in Kansas
Who wanted to know what was upsis.
He set up his scope,
But the darn thing broke
And he wept all the way to his mattress.
    - Jerry Pool

It's great to be out in the dark
With your telescope; oh, what a lark!
But with a friend or two
That want to share your view,
Now that is a walk in the park!

It looked like a glorious night,
But the streetlamps were turned up too bright.
When shining that way,
The night turned to day
And made me wish for a ruritan site.

Astronomy is sometimes a curse
As you need more and more of a purse.
You get a hunger to feed
That bigger aperture need.
So I ask you, "Now, what could be worse?"

Upon receiving my A.L. Double Star club pin:

"I'm done!" said Tom, blowing a bubble.
"And I got a pin for all of my trouble.
The list wasn't bad,
But, boy, am I glad
It's done, I was starting to see double!"

Mir was a space station rare;
The Soviets launched it up there.
It served man for years,
Through laughter and tears,
But then fell into disrepair.

The funding for Mir had gone dead.
"We must deorbit" they said.
It streaked through the air
With a meteoric flare,
Then fell to the ocean, like lead.

The Russians had to give up on Mir.
It deteriorated year after year.
Free tacos were offered to all,
If Mir came down on the trawl.
But she missed the target I fear.
    - Jerry Pool

The Journey

I looked at the sky one clear night;
The heavens were glorious and bright.
As I sat there and gazed,
I was greatly amazed
At the glow of the heavenly light.

There were stars and galaxies galore,
And nebulae and clusters and more!
Tho' distances astound,
Still the light did abound
And shone upon all -- wealthy or poor.

I wondered how it all would appear
If I were someplace other than here
And I'd see the display
Of our own Milky Way
Up close, and with everything near.

Perhaps there'd be a nebulous cloud,
Its colors shining boldly and loud.
Taking up half the sky,
I would probably sigh
And ask, "What is hidden by the shroud?"

Or maybe I'd be near a cluster
Of a thousand suns with their luster.
The heavens would be bright
And there'd hardly be night;
Sleep would be a hard thing to muster.

I thought I would enjoy the sky more
If from somewhere else I could explore;
But I see I was wrong --
I wouldn't like it long.
I guess that Earth is the perfect shore!

Yelled my astro professor (named Bob),
"What's the 'three-degree background', you slob?"
I replied, "Sad to say,
Ph.D. to B.A.,
It is no guarantee of a job!"
    - David M. Smith

E.T.'s craft came down out of heaven
At night; it was half past eleven.
When I saw him get out,
I said with a shout,
"You look like NGC-457!"

While searching the heavens one day
In the merry old month they call May
Spielberg found ET;
Was happy's could be,
But sadly, it then ran away.
    - Jerry Pool & Tom Campbell

The Earth is quite tilted, we know,
As around our own Sun it does go.
At 23.5 degrees
It spins with such ease
And changes the seasonal show.

Eclipses were once fairly cryptic,
But now they require no great mystic.
It happens, as a rule,
When either New Moon or Full
Occurs while it's on the ecliptic.

There once was a creature from Mars,
Who said, as he gazed up at the stars,
"It would take me too long
To show my joy with a song,
But maybe I'll hum a few bars."

A moment just after The Bang,
Some particles formed, in a gang.
They then got together,
Expanded forever:
Of this I have now got the hang!
    - Doug Bray

It does seem surprisingly odd
That anyone disbelieves God -
When physics reveals
That what turns the wheels
Are Quarks in an infinite squad.
    - Neil McLellan

That builder of electrical cars,
Elon Musk, says he's going to Mars.
To help prove his case
He put Starman in space -
So soon the Red Planet is ours!