Tag: Black hole

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Freckles by John Hawkhead

black hole horizon
the galaxy of freckles
mum used to own

by John Hawkhead

A black hole horizon, or event horizon, is a boundary around a black hole beyond which neither matter nor light can escape the black hole’s gravitational force. Any object that crosses the horizon is pulled irrevocably into the black hole and cannot return. It is currently thought that each of the estimated 200 billion large galaxies in the observable universe have a black hole at their centre – although some smaller galaxies do not. Black Holes grow by accreting stars, dust and gas that come too close to the horizon.

Although some human cultures believe in the concept of reincarnation, death is mostly considered to be a ‘point of no return’ regardless of any belief in an afterlife. This poem remembers the death of the poet’s mother and the freckles she had as a child.

Further reading:

‘Event horizon’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@haikuhawk.bsky.social) is a writer and artist from the south-west of England. His work has been published globally over the last 25 years, including three books of haiku / senryu: ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’ (available from Alba Publishing. http://www.albapublishing.com/) and ‘Four Horse Parable’ (available from Nun Prophet Press).

Read more of John’s sciku here!

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Yearning by Quinn Clark

Galactic arms curl
Into tight spirals for warmth—
Sometimes, so do we.

by Quinn Clark

‘Yearning’ is inspired by the hot gas and plasma present between galaxies and within galactic clusters, as well as a sentimental connection to human thermoregulation. Although this hot intracluster gas ought to cool off, observations show a contradictory reduced cooling rate. Some astronomers theorise that this prolonged heat and turbulence could be due to interactions with matter flowing from supermassive black holes.

This poem first appeared in The Best Haiku Anthology 2024 published by Haiku Crush.

Further reading:

‘Staying Warm: The Hot Gas in Clusters of Galaxies’, 2014, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, available: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/staying-warm-hot-gas-clusters-galaxies

Author bio:

Quinn Clark is a poet/author from England. An astronomy enthusiast, they have classified thousands of galaxies with the Zooniverse’s Galaxy Zoo project. Their poems have been published with New Writing North, Haiku Crush, The Customs House (as runner-up to The Terry Kelly Poetry Prize 2022), and Tour de Moon.

You can find out more about Quinn at their website: https://quinnclark.co.uk and by following them @adashofseaglass on Twitter, Bluesky & Instagram.

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The Big Decay Theory by Martina Matijević

our universe weds
the Hawking radiation
final cul-de-sac

by Martina Matijević

Researchers from Radboud University now believe the universe will decay faster than previously thought, due to Hawking radiation. White dwarfs and black holes will evaporate in about 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner than the older estimate of 10¹¹⁰⁰ years. Surprisingly, black holes and neutron stars will disappear around the same time.

Further reading:

‘Universe decays faster than thought, but still takes a long time’, 2025, Radboud University Nijmegen, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250512105214.htm

‘An upper limit to the lifetime of stellar remnants from gravitational pair production’, 2025, Falcke, H., Wondrak, M.F. & van Suijlekom, W.D., Submitted to arXiv, available: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.14734

Author bio:

Martina Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, Dadakuku, Haiku Commentary, and others. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi

Read more sciku by Martina here.

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The quasar by Martina Matijević

Quasar beams with might,
The angry black hole awakens—
Who switched on the stars?

by Martina Matijević

Astronomers have identified the brightest and fastest-growing quasar ever observed, which is powered by a supermassive black hole. This black hole is rapidly growing at a rate of one solar mass per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole known. The quasar, located 12 billion light-years away, is over 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.

Further reading:

‘Brightest and fastest-growing: Astronomers identify record-breaking quasar’, 2024, ESO, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240222122324.htm

‘The accretion of a solar mass per day by a 17-billion solar mass black hole’, 2024, Wolf, C. et al., Nature Astronomy, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x

Author bio:

Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, View from Atlantis and Awen. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi 

Read more sciku by Martina here.

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Quantumku by James Penha

and soon haiku too
will wiggle syllables through
computer wormholes

By James Penha

“In an experiment that ticks most of the mystery boxes in modern physics, a group of researchers announced on Wednesday that they had simulated a pair of black holes in a quantum computer and sent a message between them through a shortcut in space-time called a wormhole… In their report, published Wednesday in Nature, the researchers described the result in measured words: ‘This work is a successful attempt at observing traversable wormhole dynamics in an experimental setting.'”

Quote from The New York Times article ‘Physicists Create ‘The Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine’ from November 30, 2022.

Further reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/physics-wormhole-quantum-computer.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05424-3

Author bio:

Expat New Yorker James Penha  (he/him?) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits TheNewVerse.News, an online journal of current-events poetry. You can find out more about James’ poetry on his website https://jamespenha.com and catch up with him on Twitter @JamesPenha

Read more of James’ sciku here.

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Milky hourglass

Radio bubbles.
Milky hourglass light-years tall,
black hole at its neck.

Scientists observing the centre of our galaxy have discovered a pair of radio-emitting bubbles stretching hundreds of light-years above and below the central region of the Milky Way.

To find this vast hourglass structure, Heywood et al (2019) conducted observations at wavelengths near 23 cm – dense clouds of dust block visible light from the centre of the galaxy but this form of radio emission allows scientists to see past the clouds.

At the centre of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole. Most of the time it’s relatively calm but it can flare up when especially large amounts of dust and gas fall into it, a possible explanation for the radio bubble formation. An alternative suggestion for how the bubbles were created is a “massive burst of star formation”, according to researcher William Cotton at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia and one of the co-authors of the paper. Regardless of how they were formed, the bubbles were created a few million years ago.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1532-5

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Universal truth by John Norwood

Photograph stitches
Global perspective binding
Universal truth

By John Norwood

This sciku was inspired by the first images of a black hole captured by astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope. The black hole is found at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87, 55 million light years from earth and the image required collaboration between over 200 astronomers.

The poem is a reflection on how an image created by collating observations from various locations all over the earth gives us insight on the physical nature of the universe. 

Image of black hole Messier 87 captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. Credit: EHT Collaboration.

You can read more about the image and find references to the 6 papers here: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

John Norwood is a Mechanical Engineer working with Carbon, Inc. to revolutionize how things are made. His interests include old houses, yoga, baking, cryptography, and bluegrass music. You can follow him on Twitter under the handle @pryoga

Enjoyed this sciku? Check out some of John’s other work: The answer is none, God may be defined, With enough data, Rivers cut corners, and Squeamish ossifrage.