"Light Years" by Joan Swift

Is light the last thing lost or never lost at all?
There is light so far away it's gone
by the time we see it,
the tail lights on the highway far ahead
that say someone is traveling
this same dark way.
Those blue clumps lost ten billion light-
years ago at the edge of the universe
redshift from ultraviolet to the visible
and are found by the Hubble telescope,
sleek horse pulling through dark
the reeling carriages of space
even as they change into roses,
thunderheads or phantom animals
we never imagined.
What fiery dust was our beginning,
left us a tender earth? far out in the universe
a tomorrow we can't see is singing the last word
of  a song we heard long ago under stars
like blossoms on black water.


--Joan Swift


I absolutel love that last line "far out in the universe a tomorrow we can't see is singing the last word of a song we heard long ago". Science is magic of the very best kind. I'm convinced God is the world's greatest scientist and absolutely glories in the natural laws of the universe.

There expedient laws and there are natural laws. (There are also unjust laws, but that's a different discussion.) On Jupiter, is pi the same? If we used a different numbering system, does e still exist? The laws of thermodynamics, newton's laws, the laws of relativity - these are the natural laws by which everything else is able to work.

I read the other day that some scientists in China have determined that time travel can't happen because single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum. No faster than speed of light, no time travel (somehow - not sure how the rest of the physics work.) Why? Because even photons obey the laws of physics. So where did the laws of physics come from? Are they true for all worlds? All universes? I can't even imagine one where, say, gravity didn't work. There is that great quote from Feynman about how the angels now push inwards. Maybe that'll be for tomorrow.