Something to Believe In

Believe in something,

for living without must leave us in doubt,

insecure.

Believe in yourself,

the pundits will say. But what if the way

is obscure?

Believe not at all?

What then is life for? But there must be more,

I adjure.

Believe, then, in what?

Or should I say “whom”? Who pierces all gloom,

to assure?

Believe in the Lord.

Wherever you fare, He's already there,

true and pure.

Copyright ©2020, Paul H. Harder II

This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.

I really like the music of the song of the same title, by the Irish group Clannad, in collaboration with Bruce Hornsby. The lyrics, though, say that everybody is looking but the search is hopeless.  This is my response.

How the Axion Might Have Got its Name

The newest thing in the particle zoo,

it needed a name, and a perfect one, too.

Profs and their students all thought, day and night,

but nothing they mentioned was perfectly right.

So, all of the Science Guys sent out a plea:

"Send us a name to which all can agree!"

They started a website where all could suggest,

then started elections to see which was blessed.

A child of but ten was the one who proposed

the name that had won when the counting was closed.

But Physics rejected his "Boozy McBoson",

glanced at some laundry soap labeled as "Axion",

and they just went with that.

Copyright ©2020, Paul H. Harder II

This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License


Okay, see, I was listening to an episode of the podcast "Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe" -- specifically, the one titled "What is the axion?".  Daniel and Jorge started with some banter about how physicists name the particles they discover. After an  interesting discussion of just what this hypothetical axion particle is -- if it exists at all -- Daniel explained how it got its name.  The real story is not all that different from what I came up with here, except for the silly Internet voting idea.