Daily Science Haiku - The Mathematics of Poetry

All language is math.
We quantify translation,
enumerating verse.

How Google Converted Language Translation into a Problem of Vector Space Mathematics

Daily Science Haiku - Black Moon

January steals
new moon from February,
making a Black Moon.

101 Astronomical Events for 2014

Daily Science Haiku - Orchid Mantis

Lovely predator,
delicately camouflaged,
enticing to death.

Terrifying Orchid Mantis

Daily Science Haiku - Mars Express

Mars Express buzzes
Phobos, just to see whether
it will ring hollow.

Mars Express to Make Daredevil Flyby of Phobos

Daily Science Haiku - Noctilucent Clouds

Noctilucent clouds
above Antarctica skim space
on meteor smoke.

The Dramatic Expanse of Antarctica's Noctilucent Clouds

Daily Science Haiku - Prebiotic Molecules

Microscopic dust
floats on planetary winds,
scaffolds for new life.

The building blocks of life may form in exoplanet atmospheres

Also cool: Shoebox CNC

Daily Science Haiku - Merry Christmas, Alan Turing

Once, being gay trumped
genius. At last, Alan
Turing is pardoned.

Alan Turing, Enigma Code-Breaker and Computer Pioneer, Wins Pardon

Daily Science Haiku - Observation vs. Reality

We see by what light
reaches us. The universe
expands beyond sight.

How Big is the Universe?

Daily Science Haiku - Landing on a comet

Landing on the moon
is easy. Try a speeding
ball of ice and dust.

2014 preview: First touchdown on a speeding comet

Daily Science Haiku - Three Miles of Mars

Just three miles of Mars
erodes and dents rover's tires.
Mechanic wanted.

This is what happens when you drive through three miles of Mars

Daily Science Haiku - The Language of Plants

Plants communicate.
What do they whisper? Gossip?
Profanity? Truth?

The Secret Language of Plants

Daily Science Haiku - The Lakes of Titan

The lakes of Titan,
composed of ethane, methane,
may yet harbor life.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Lakes of Titan

Daily Science Haiku - Exomoon

Gravitational
microlensing can show both;
exoplanet, moon.

Moon Shadow

Daily Science Haiku - Printed Eyes

Your eyesight failing?
Just print new retinal cells,
add to optic nerve.

Scientists 'print' new eye cells

Daily Science Haiku - The Alien Intelligence of Crows

Abstract reasoning
not restricted to humans.
Crows like puzzles, too.

Crows could be the key to understanding alien intelligence

Daily Science Haiku - Skynet?

Boston Dynamics
bought by Google? Remember
motto: don't be evil.

The Day Google Became Skynet

Daily Science Haiku: The Art and Science of Snow

Hexagonal ice.
Leibniz's Law and Robert Frost.
Snow inspires us all.

The Art and Science of Snow

Daily Science Haiku - China on the Moon

China on the moon.
Yutu rover now expands
moon's community.

China Lands Rover on Moon

Daily Science Haiku - Approaching Singularity?

We are outnumbered.
Most internet traffic comes
from non-human bots.

Over 60 Percent of Internet Traffic is now Driven by Bots

Daily Science Haiku - Nanoscale Switches

Silicon carbide
forms energy efficient
nanoscale switches.

Nanoscale Energy-Efficient Switching Devices

Daily Science Haiku - Grace Hopper

...invented COBOL,
first debugged a computer,
shattered boundaries.

Grace Hopper Memorialized by Google Doodle

Daily Science Haiku - Uncle Sam Wants You... to Hack

Obama says, "Hack."
Don't just play with your smartphone.
Code and change the world.

Obama Says Everyone Should Learn How to Hack

Daily Science Haiku - Finding Dark Matter

This week is Computer Science Education Week! In honor of this, and my two daughters who are happily learning to code (yes, even the six-year-old), all haikus this week will have a CS theme, even if it doesn't look like it from the title. Now, on to the haiku:

Superconducting
circuits on a benchtop may
find rare axions.

Elusive Dark Matter May Have Already Been Found

Daily Science Haiku - Blame Heat Waves on Loss of Arctic Ice

Shrinking Arctic ice
may contribute to heat waves.
Less ice, more heat. Duh.

Blame Heat Waves on Loss of Arctic Ice

Daily Science Haiku - Impossible World

Impossible world,
so far from your sun, so cold,
how do you exist?

Impossible alien world is impossible. Yet there it is.

Daily Science Haiku - Saturn's Hexagonal Storm

Hexagonal storm,
complex counterclockwise dance,
crowns Saturn's north pole.

New Hi-Res Footage of Saturn's Hexagon

Daily Science Haiku - Honeybees Recognize You

Among arugula,
honeybees part before me.
Do they know my face?

Honeybees can recognize individual faces.

Daily Science Haiku - Commercial Space

Blasting to orbit,
Falcon 9 boosts satellite,
privatizing space.

SpaceX Just Made History. Again.

Daily Science Haiku - Microbiome

Not all flesh is you.
Ecosystems teem within.
You are a village.

Exploring the Invisible Universe That Lives On Us and In Us

Daily Science Haiku - Our Neighborhood

Surrounded by worlds
habitable, earthlike, within
just sixty light years.

XKCD: It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Daily Science Haiku - Cranberry Chemistry Experiment

The long binding chains
of pectin make cranberry sauce
jiggly joyfulness.

Saucy Science: Comparing Cranberry Condiments

Daily Science Haiku - Tantalizing Possibility of T. Rex DNA

Shielded by iron,
T. Rex collagen remains,
defies extinction.

What Preserved T. Rex Tissue?

Daily Science Haiku - Walking on Snail Poop

Recycle paper:
Feed to snails, press waste in tiles.
Walking on snail poop.

These Colorful Floor Tiles Were Made From Snail Poop

Daily Science Haiku - Turkey Recipes from NASA

Bored with brined turkey?
Deep-frying just too ho-hum?
Try rocket engine!

NASA Scientists Provide Four Crazy Recipes

Daily Science Haiku - Comet for Thanksgiving

Racing for the sun,
Comet ISON flares its tail,
rivaling turkey.

Viewing info for Comet ISON

Note: DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN, especially with binoculars or a telescope. Find a convenient building to block the sun so that you can view the comet safely.

Daily Science Haiku - Mapping Mars

Schiaparelli mapped
the seas and channels of Mars.
Let us map again.

Robotic Mars Landing Module Named Schiaparelli

Daily Science Haiku - Stanene

Perfect conductor,
a single layer of tin
speeds electrons on.

Move Over Graphene

Guest Poem: The Wind

by Annelise Aminoff

The Wind blows.
It rustles my hair.
It blows through the trees, graceful as a ballerina.
It picks up the leaves in dives and curves.
It swoops amongst the grass in the meadow
and gently cools those in its path.

Sometimes it blows gently, talking to the trees.
While other times, it is as destructive as can be.
But no matter how strong, no matter how soft, the
wind is the wind, and forever will be.

Written by my 9-year-old daughter

Daily Science Haiku - Missing Butterflies

Bees aplenty hummed
in my garden this year but
alas, no monarchs.

The Year the Monarch Didn't Appear

Daily Science Haiku - High Energy Neutrinos Captured

Ghostly neutrinos
from a distant galaxy
snared in icy net.

Unprecedented neutrino discovery

Daily Science Haiku - Growing Plants on the Moon

Nestled in moon dust,
a small green tendril unfurls:
basil on the moon.

NASA's Next Frontier: Growing Plants on the Moon

Daily Science Haiku - Colonizing Venus

Fair Venus beckons.
We dream of flying castles,
safe from metal rain.

Let's Colonize Venus

Daily Science Haiku - 3D Printing Goes to Space

Printed electronics
nestled in a satellite
brave the vacuum's kiss.

First-ever 3D Printed Electronics Launched into Space

Daily Science Haiku - Four-winged Microraptor

Soaring tetrapod,
how did you manage four wings?
Microraptor, glide.

How did this four-winged microraptor fly?

Daily Science Haiku - Herding Robots

Herding stray cattle,
a robot circles, nudges.
Who needs man's best friend?

Rover the cattle-herding robot

Weekend Science Sonnet - Small Changes, Big Effects

It's easy to believe we cannot change,

that we are powerless to swerve aside.

For some, this means denial, head in sand;

the world is just too large, our actions small.

For others, causation is all too clear,

but how can individuals affect

the mounting problems? Superstorms, melting

icecaps, shrinking forests, extinction.

Remember: small changes have big effects.

A single protocol can make a difference.

One voice in the wilderness can call

hundreds, thousands, and ten thousand more.

We hold the future in our trembling hands.

Make one change and help to change the world.
 

Daily Science Haiku - 3D Printing the Smithsonian

Print mammoth, dolphin,
Amelia Earhart, gunboat,
and cosmic Buddha.

Smithsonian 3D Printable Models

Daily Science Haiku - Lithium Air Batteries

Viral templates grow
batteries like coral reefs,
breathing oxygen.

Scientists use a Mutated Virus to Build Lithium Air Batteries

Daily Science Haiku - Plastisphere

Note to polluters:
If you can't clean your mess up,
I will. Mother Earth.

New Life Found on Plastic Waste

Daily Science Haiku - Good at Math

Take variables.
Integrate. Simmer slowly.
Patience. Math takes time.

How do I Know if I'm Good Enough at Math?

Daily Science Haiku - The Mystery of Moon Dust

Invasive moon dust,
soil of meteoric pounding,
too sharp to contain.

The Mystery of Moon Dust

Daily Science Haiku - Fallen Satellite

Satellite orbit
decayed. It rests again in
gravity's embrace.

European satellite about to reenter Earth's atmosphere

Weekend Science Sonnet - No Man Invents Alone

Apologies for being a day late. Sonnets sometimes need to cook a bit.

The fallen apple or rising bathwater,
the glowing filament or buzzing wire:
these symbols of the lonely scientist
belie the fact. Discoveries don't come
from vacuum. Standing upon the shoulders
of giants, yes, but more so hand in hand
with colleagues and with friends. Collaborate
to spark ideas, make discoveries.
Edison was front man for a team,
the Muckers: scientists, inventors all
who found the public eager to believe
the myth of solitary genius. Where
would Watson and Crick without Franklin?
Bell sans Watson? Higgs, Englert without CERN?

Thomas Edison and the Myth of the Lone Inventor

Daily Science Haiku - The YORP Effect

Space rock with six tails
spins in ecstasy of light,
questioning the norm.

Freak Asteroid with Six Tails

Daily Science Haiku - Haiyan

Fibonacci swirl
screams hurricane winds and rain.
This can not end well.

Super Typhoon Haiyan

Daily Science Haiku - Extinction

Western black rhino
is now extinct. Tuna, yew,
palm, who will be next?

Western black rhinoceros officially declared extinct

Daily Science Haiku - Fusion Works

The power of suns
is in our grasp. World energy
fueled by sea water.

Breakthrough: The world's first net-positive nuclear fusion reaction

Daily Science Haiku - Diwali Goes to Mars

Like Diwali lamps,
rocket arcs across the sky
to Mars. Lakshmi bless.

India launches first mission to Mars.

Daily Science Haiku - Inverse Light

Turn light inside out.
Kugelblitz: light so intense,
it swallows itself.

How to make a black hole: Turn light inside out

Weekend Science Sonnet - Cancer

With cancer, most of what you've heard is wrong.
It's not disease. A feature, not a bug.
We mutate to evolve. We change or die.
Replication errors will occur.
All animals get cancer; mammals more.
Dinosaurs got cancer. All those cells.
Antioxidants don't help at all.
Being tall increases cancer risk.
So does menstruation, every time.
Cell phones aren't a risk; it's the birth
of the universe that will get you.
And cancer's smart. It learns, changes, evolves.
Curing cancer makes no sense. There is
no cure for having cells, for being life.

Why most of what you've heard about cancer is wrong

Daily Science Haiku - Hybrid Eclipse

Sunrise tomorrow
(eastern standard time) the moon
takes a bite of sun.

Hybrid solar eclipse on November 3

Daily Science Haiku - Microplastic Beads Clog Lakes

Luxurious soap
cleans your skin with plastic beads
that dirty our lakes.

Microplastic pollution in the surface waters of the Laurentian Great Lakes

Daily Science Haiku - Open Hand

Make prosthetic hand
using open source design and
a 3D printer.

Father makes open source prosthetic hand for his son

Daily Science Haiku - Kepler 78b

Earthlike in size, mass,
and density, but too hot.
Goldilocks it ain't.

Kepler 78b

Bonus haiku!

Right now, influence
the future of humanity.
Tweet #humansinspace.

Help decide the future of human spaceflight, only on  Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Daily Science Haiku - Life at the Speed of Light

A 3D printer
for the genome? Download your
flu vaccine today.

Life at the Speed of Light

Daily Science Haiku - Time Travel

Note: I actually wrote this yesterday, but I've been sick for nearly a week now, and I just plain forgot to hit "Publish." Apologies, Jenise

Spinning universe?
Infinite cylinder spins?
Wormholes? Nah. Just live.

3 Simple and 3 Complicated Ways to Time Travel

Weekend Science Sonnet - NSA Protests

Haikus are nice and easy to write, the verse equivalent of popcorn. But I'm finding myself frustrated by the short form, occasionally wanting to write more on a subject. So I thought that on weekends, when I nominally have more time, I might write a longer piece, such as a sonnet.

So here's the first installment, inspired by the NSA protests this weekend.
 

In 1984, a painting screwed

to the wall neatly hid a two-way screen.

Today, all screens are two-way. Our accrued

lives, socialized, blogged, twittered, seen

anywhere the Internet can reach.

Our phones calls monitored, our email tracked,

our texts and likes and posts and selfies each

become a datum warehoused, numbered – hacked?

Security backdoors give access to

devices, gateways to identity,

for our protection, we're told. False is true.

The Fourth Amendment balks security.

Probable cause? With every word we say,

we become suspects to the NSA.

Daily Science Haiku - Asteroid 2013 TV135

Higher odds today
can become no chance, depends
on trajectory.

Why is the chance of an asteroid impact in 2032 going up? [Don't panic.]

Daily Science Haiku - Smartphone Microscope

Buzzing your pocket:
infinitesimal worlds,
yours to discover.

How to turn a smartphone into a digital microscope

Daily Science Haiku - Remipede

Pale, toxic cousin
of woodlice, remipede hunts
in total darkness.

First venomous crustacean found.

Daily Science Haiku - Poppy

Open-source poppy
blooms, pollinating young minds,
seeding engineers.

The Poppy Project

Bonus Poem!

At the Triangle Inn

Morning light outlines
the ceiling vigas. Adobe
walls begin to glow.

Cuyamungue breathes
the crisp high desert air like
lovers sighing dawn.

Oct 12, 2013

Daily Science Haiku - Li-Fi

Light reaches your eyes;
you see. Light reaches laptop;
you see the whole world.

A plan to turn every lightbulb into an ultra-fast alternative to Wi-Fi

Note: Sometimes, poems just fall on you. No sooner had I posted yesterday's haiku than a link to this article arrived in the MIT LinkedIn feed. Go figure. So I wrote the haiku and saved it. This morning, all I had to do was click Publish.

Daily Science Haikus

While my father-in-law was here visiting last month, he mentioned that he writes a couplet to his fiancee each morning. This got the back of my head thinking, Hey, why don't I do something like that? And then I thought, a bit more consciously, hey, why don't I write a haiku every day about science and post it on the Facebook page for Einstein's Workshop? So I began today with a haiku about Titan and meteor impacts. I'll also be posting the haikus here.

The hardest part of this, by far, was finding just the right science news to write about. I cruised the NYTimes, ScienceNews, Scientific American, boingboing, Laughing Squid, and finally found the right article in New Scientist. I'm rather bummed that I missed Ada Lovelace Day on the 15th. I may write something about her tomorrow anyway, because I can. And I may put the birthdays of every great female scientist in my calendar so that I can immortalize each one as they go by. But that's all a lot of work, so I'd also appreciate suggestions. If you see a very cool science tidbit (or you've just published something cool and want it promoted), let me know.

And now, today's haiku:

Wetlands on Titan?
Meteor impacts erased
by hydrocarbon swamps.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24430-astrophile-soggy-bogs-swallow-craters-on-titan.html#.UmPRRRDaM-A

The Bridge, in February

2/24/2013

The masts, vigilant

as bare winter trees,

anchor the base of the bridge

where it rises, bowed and becoming,

from Beverly to Salem.

Snowflakes scatter

along the pavement.

To the east, the gaudy dome

of a natural gas repository

squats awkwardly among

dormant sailboats and trawlers.

To the west, the railroad runs

alongside the bridge like

a tag-along younger brother,

eager and impatient to be off.

Gulls wheel, cormorants bob,

empty docks rise and fall with the tides.

At low tide, men and women

encased in rubber to their chests

stride along the muddy bay floor,

buckets and shovels in hand:

clamming.

All this glimpsed

in a moment of paradox:

concrete in air above sea.

Then down the graceful curve

into Salem and the embrace

of civilization.