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Poems of Space: Pioneering Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell Reads “Halley’s Comet” by Stanley Kunitz

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An ode to the transcendent meeting point of outer space and inner space.

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Developed various images or models for cosmological phenomena through poetry. In particular, her poems challenge conventional models of dark matter

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pulsars, a groundbreaking discovery now used to observe dark matter

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pulsars, a groundbreaking discovery now used to observe dark matter

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(pdf) Yeats, Plath and Whitman

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A couple of weeks ago I bought a copy of Dark Matter: Poems of Space, an anthology of poems old and new with astronomical connections edited by Maurice Riordan and Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. I quit…

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In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding, the song was transmitted to the North Star Polaris.

Sadly the song will take 431 years to reach the star and its planetary system, even if it exists, may not be suited for life. The message is thus very unlikely to reach any alien lifeform. It's sad that aliens will never be able to experience the music of the Beatles after their life changing trip to India :(

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Maya Angelou reading her poem "A Brave and Startling Truth"

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This form of communication consists in the transmission of signals between planetary system. It's clearly easier to implement than interstellar travel : indeed for decades our technologies have allowed us to do so. However, the distances from Earth to other potentially inhabited systems and the limitations of the speed of light introduce major delays to this tranmission. Even an immediate reply to radio communications sent to stars tens of thousands of light-years away would take many human generations to arrive :,(

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"Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my open ears" 

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"Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my open ears" 

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In a 1970 interview, Lennon referred to this song as:

[…] one of the best lyrics I’ve written. In fact, it could be the best. It’s good poetry, or whatever you call it, without chewin' it. See, the ones I like are the ones that stand as words, without melody. They don’t have to have any melody, like a poem, you can read them.

In this song Lennon, through the use of prayers in Sanskrit, reflects on the natural forces that exist around him, including the likes of astronomical bodies. He also conveys a message of Free Love : through the lyrics "nothing’s gonna change (his) world" he argues that he won't let any type of negativity destroy his universally-loving disposition.

Thus, by litteraly broadcasting this song across the universe and encouraging people to play it along the transmission, NASA is sending aims at sending message of unity and peace to the world. Indeed, music is the langage which unites every human -and hopefully alien - being. By sharing such a beautiful and meaningful song, the american space agencies sends to the universe a very heartwarming, but candid, vision of life on Earth.