Tag: Matter

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So What’s the Matter? by James Penha

you will not step twice
in the same river as long
as you are alive

by James Penha

Heraclitus knew what he was talking about when he said, “No person ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and it’s not the same person.”

Complex-systems science—researchers in the field won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2021–recognizes, as Adam Frank explains in his Atlantic essay, that a living body is made of matter, just like everything else. “But the atoms you’re built from today won’t be the atoms you’re built from in a year. That means you and every other living thing aren’t an inert object, like a rock, but a dynamic pattern playing out over time.”

Further reading:

‘The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore’, 2025, Frank, A., The Atlantic, available: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2025/12/physics-life-reductionism-complexity/685257/

Author bio:

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him 🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. His story collection  Queer As Folk Tales  was published by Deep Desires Press in October 2025. His chapbook of poems  American Daguerreotypes is available for Kindle.

Penha edits TheNewVerse.News, an online journal of current-events poetry. You can find out more about his poetry on his website https://jamespenha.com and catch up with him on BlueSky @jamespenha.bsky.social

Read more of James’ sciku here.

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Dark Matter by Martina Matijević

The secret marriage
of dark matter and fifth force.
A matter of fact?

by Martina Matijević

Scientists from Université de Genève and collaborators performed one of the most precise tests of whether dark matter behaves like ordinary matter by comparing galaxy motions within cosmic gravitational wells to the predicted depth of those wells.

Their observations showed that dark matter falls into these wells exactly as expected under standard gravity, allowing no measurable deviations. Because any additional “fifth force” acting on dark matter stronger than about 7% of gravity would have altered galaxy velocities in detectable ways, the researchers conclude that if such a force exists, it must be weaker than that threshold.

Further reading:

‘Dark matter acts surprisingly normal in a new cosmic test’, 2025, Université de Genève, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251115095924.htm

‘Comparing the motion of dark matter and standard model particles on cosmological scales’, 2025, Grimm, N., et al., Nature Communications, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65100-8

Author bio:

Martina Matijević is a poet from Croatia who has traveled around the Sun 24 times, which makes her 24 years old in Earth’s timekeeping. Her work has been featured in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Kokako, The Cold Moon Journal, Acorn, 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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A super position by John Hawkhead

quantum superpositioning myself in her g-B-o-A-o-D-d books

by John Hawkhead

Quantum superposition is the principle that a quantum system can exist in many states simultaneously until it is measured or observed directly. Measurement forces the system to ‘collapse’ to a single, definite state. The concept is demonstrated by the ‘double’-slit experiment which shows that light and matter can act as waves and particles at the same time.

Perhaps the most famous thought experiment associated with this phenomenon is Schrödinger’s Cat which illustrates superposition. In quantum superposition theory a cat, locked in a box with poison in a flask and a radioactive source that may or may not release the poison, is both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and reveals the definite state of the cat. The poem is a light hearted response to the theory.

Further reading:

‘Quantum superposition’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

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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Interactions by John Hawkhead

bosons and mesons
all the stuff we talk about
just interactions

by John Hawkhead

In particle physics, bosons are subatomic particles whose spin quantum number has an integer value and which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Examples of bosons include the Higgs boson particle and photons (light).

Mesons are a form of boson: they’re hadronic subatomic particles composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks bound together by a strong interaction. Mesons are the interaction agents between protons and electrons, but are unstable outside of the nucleus, decaying to particles such as electrons, neutrinos and photons. Despite their small size (0.6 times the size of a proton or neutron) and instability, they’re observable by particle detectors and have been used to study the properties and interactions of quarks.

Further reading:

‘Boson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson

‘Bosons and Fermions’, Office of Science, US Department of Energy – https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsbosons-and-fermions

‘Meson’, Vedantu article – https://www.vedantu.com/physics/meson

‘Meson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson

‘Meson’, Encyclopaedia Britannica article – https://www.britannica.com/science/meson

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

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Axiogenesis by Alicia Sometimes

surplus baryons >
    antibaryons. Whirling
             QCD axions

I was fascinated by the etymology of this word. In Greek ‘axía’ (worth, value, merit) and ‘génesis’ (production, creation, formation, origination). Here, axiogenesis is a mechanism in which the cosmological excess of baryons (a type of composite subatomic particle) over antibaryons is generated from the rotation of the QCD axion.

Raymond T. Co & Keisuke Harigaya (2020) outline how Axions Could Explain Baryon Asymmetry – the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.111602

Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet, writer and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems and more. She is director and co-writer of the art/science planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. She is currently a Science Gallery Melbourne ‘Leonardo’ (creative advisor). Her TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about the passion of combining art with science. You can catch up with her on Twitter @aliciasometimes and at her website www.aliciasometimes.com

Enjoyed Alicia’s sciku? Check out her earlier poems ‘Antimatter’ and ‘The Born Rule‘.