Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Momentum

Switching from the stillness of winter to the vivacity of spring requires a lot to energy. It is the energy input of these days of sun, the spring-speed winds, the thousands of raindrops falling at terminal velocity, the stored starches and oils of seeds that, combining with the waking microbiology of the soil, make the explosion of green that seems to shift every one's mental inertia. The motion of the universe made visible, palpable, smellable, by the anti-entropic storage of electromagnetic energy in the biosphere. Suddenly, life. A new biogenesis every year, every time as improbable in my mind as it is inevitable. It makes me realize that everything in the universe has momentum. There really is no rest, only a constant change of position and state on the timeline of endless expansion. Since all mater relates across distances, pulling and sharing inertia, velocities follow graphic curves that bend to waves. Angular velocity arises in masses from collisions, and gravity makes it impossible for this motion to be anything by rotational. Spinning and Spinning and spinning. Frictionless space vacuum bearings sustain impact driven angular momenta that only slow by magnetic field line drag in stellar particle winds. Fluid accretions, molten by dynamic kineticism, bulge, erupt and explode; or they bind, held together by forces that increase with proximity. Molecules orbit molecules to form dust, to form stone. Stones impact noiselessly in cold confusion and connect to become one mass, to gather more stones. And this continues through galaxy-long dust clouds to form planet-spheres of solid stones or swirling gas. Motions sweep the cloud, gather gasses, combine, collapse, rotate.
Fusion.
From the struggling implosion of matter comes bubbling through the age-long pinball exchange in electron-cloud crowded confusion, the explosion of light-speed photon momentum. Streamers of energetic, gravity-produced light fly from rotating arms of spiral disk galaxies across distances that make them look motionless. The universe moving invisibly , but in motion endlessly. Angular momentum of rotational velocities balanced by massive forces across light year spans, visibility itself moving in photon packets with motion imperceptible. A moment instantaneously static to the minuscule human brain and yet it is Spring!

1 comment:

Phil & Sari said...

This is great! Never thought of Spring like this.
It makes me think of how the miniscule human brain can't even wrap around something as cyclical as a year and therefore have to create an extra day every four years just to accommodate.

It's amazing to me how much our momentum slows down during the winter months. Almost like a hibernation. Natures way of making us slow down and re-energize in order to "Spring" back into action. Nature know best, why fight it!