This is a book review of Origins: The Cosmos in Verse by Joseph Conlon.
Origins: The Cosmos in Verse, by Joseph Conlon (Oneworld), 2024. Pp. 158, 19.7 x 13 cm. Price £11.99 (hardbound, ISBN 978 086154 911 5).
The book contains two long poems about physics. The first, somewhat longer, poem is "Elements", which covers Big-Bang nucleosynthesis, star formation, basics of stars, Cecilia Payne(-Goposchkin), B$^{2}FH(6), the production of elements heavier than iron, life, and the author himself. "Galaxies" starts off with some history of astronomy (especially the homogeneity of the Universe on large scales) before moving to inflation, General Relativity, and the cosmological constant, then moves down the scale to the subatomic realm and a discussion of quantum mechanics (important for inflation, spectroscopy, and X-rays, among other things) and its history, followed by a coda ("an extended simile") covering everything from Oxfordshire pubs to social networks to galaxies. Each poem is preceded by a preface of a page or so describing the structure and contents. The poems are followed by twenty-eight pages of notes adding more conventional scientific detail to the pages indicated (except for the coda in "Galaxies"). I think that many will get something out of this book.