Astronomy

“Astronomy” a Collaborative Multimedia Project by Pery Burge and Tullio DeSantis
Text and Audio by Tullio DeSantis, Imagery by Pery Burge, 2012

Astronomy is the middle section of a three-part series (Cosmology, Astronomy, and Biology). This collaboration involves combining my text and sound (audio and music) with the creative imagery of Pery Burge, artist in residence in the Thermofluids lab in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter, in the UK. We will be creating some new music, sound, and image work again soon.We hope you like Astronomy. It is our place in space*(The full text is below)*Astronomy

Before the beginning, In the
beginning. After the beginning.
An inscrutable instant between nothing and something
A time before the existence of duration
A space before the age of space

A soundless bang…

A Bang that no one hears! A
soundless cataclysm in the most cavernous gaping void the most imaginative
among us can ever imagine..we name it “creation of the universe”

Singularity – phase transition –
inflation

Planck’s ineffable epoch, from
absolute zero to Planck’s time

One to the minus 43rd
power of a second…

Quantum gravity waves, that
uncanny instant of true space and real time

Microsecond epochs, many of them

Cosmos happens

Quadrillions of instantaneous
wavicles

Spinning electromagnetic flux

Waving particles

Particulate waves

Supersymmetrical profundities of
plasma
Quantum probabalistic epoch after epoch

Quintillions of interaction events
A superheated intensification of an inestimable and durable future

Quarks hadrons leptons photons

Instants of neucleosynthesis

There comes to be a swirling
primeval system

Electron proton nuclear atomic
entities

Elemental Hydrogen

Some – thing from no – thing

Proton electron – electron proton

Stark facts of energetic matter

The phenomenal proof of material
truth

Most abundant Atomic H

Neutrons, protons, deuterium,
helium

Hydrogen mists and cosmic fogbanks

Fill the void – the void filled
with substance

A hundred thousand matter years

Of gravity

Inexorable gyres

Mixing pure hot masses in cold
empty space

Plasma in gravitational collapse

The prime cause of all structure

Vast light years across

Many parsecs of Nebulae,

Wispy evanescent deep space things

Gigantic streaming entities
birthing atomic energy, starlight, heat

Matter and anti-matter

Whole uncharted interstellar regions

Of dark energy in filamentary
networks

Quasars, pulsing with
electromagnetic waves, evolving stars, systems, and galaxies

All in a billion years

Clusters and superclusters

Deep funnels of form

Complex folds in the fabric of space

Dark matter bridging cosmos across
unfathomable arcs in time

Vortices of new creation

Whirlpool coalescences gathering
material from those first exploded stars, wild novae, and the terrible supernovae
– cosmic blast furnaces forging the elemental signatures of life in hydrogen,
oxygen, carbon, phosphorus, collecting and compressing all the products of
fission and stellar collapse…heavy elements, iron, gold, uranium.

These cycles recur in billions of
years

Sol, our Sun forming after 9
billion years

4 billion years later, cosmos
comes to life

And now 13.7 billion years later

The observer

Observes… itself, himself, herself

It is you and I

It is our eyes and our space
telescope

Our Large Hadron Collider

Embodied and externalized nerves
and brains

Our world-wide networked web of
intelligence

Our outer space probes flung far
toward the void

The Big Bang still ringing

energy moving thinking singing

In our heads…

…the brilliant photon embers.

The big bang…

…of intelligent minds.
– by Tullio DeSantis 2012