Origins: The Cosmos in Verse

(Paperback)

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There raged a thumping cosmic ballyhoo, A manic dance a rumpus to arouse The universe: of Higgs and W, Electrons, gluons, muons, Zs and taus For centuries, poetry and science have been improbable, yet constant, bedfellows. Chaucer was an amateur astronomer; Milton broke bread with Galileo; and before turning to the arts Keats was a doctor. Meanwhile, scientific luminaries like Ada Lovelace and James Clerk Maxwell moonlighted as poets, composing verse between experiments and equations. Following in this tradition, theoretical physicist Joseph Conlon spins a dazzling intergalactic epic. Drawing on his own scientific expertise, Conlon reveals the origins of our universe, through two long-form poems The Elements and The Galaxies. Journeying from the Big Bang to the edges of our ever-expanding cosmos, Origins offers a delightful and revelatory adventure through contemporary physics.

Author Bio

Joseph Conlon is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and a fellow of New College. His research spans particle physics, string theory, cosmology and astrophysics. He is the author of Why String Theory, a Physics World Book of the Year in 2016, and has authored over seventy scientific papers.