The Perils Of Nothing Poem by Paul Hartal

Does the void exist? Is nothing something?
The ancient Greeks believed that the notion of nothing
was unnatural, a figment of the imagination.
On the other hand, the Hebrews in antiquity held
that God had little tolerance for the void.
In the Creator's scheme existence deemed
as a paramount priority.

And thus, according to The Book of Genesis
in the Bible, God abolished emptiness
by creating the world ex nihilo.

Physicists nowadays claim that the universe
was born in an enormous explosion
that occurred some 15 billion years ago.
In that Big Bang the world came into being
out of nothing.

It seems, however, that nothingness involves
extreme dangers. Take, for example, atoms,
which are basically empty spaces
associated with tremendous amounts of energy (E= mc2) .
They have the harrowing potential to wipe out
the entire human race. This persisting menace itself,
quite ironically, is also emanating from the human race.

Nothingness is a core concept in science.
This is so because science relies on mathematics
which cannot exist without the nought, or zero.
The symbol 0 represents nothingness.

In mathematics zero is a number
and a very unique one. Unlike other numbers,
it refuses to grow bigger.
While, for instance, one plus one equals two,
zero plus zero remains zero.
Furthermore, you are not allowed to divide by zero,
because doing so you will get false results.

Now let us consider for our topic cosmic Black Holes.
These are remnants of large stars that die in
Supernova explosions, collapsing under the influence
of gravity. In the resulting Black Holes
matter is exceedingly dense,
as the former stars shrink in the universe
into miniscule, point-like singularities in space.
Here time might come to stand still and light
is trapped and cannot escape.

Calculating the density of a Black Hole,
a procedure in which you divide its mass by its volume,
seems to be a sisyphean task involving a mathematical no-no,
since the black hole is a singularity that has zero volume.

Now, for more trivial examples of the perils of nothing,
think of travellers who find themselves in a desert
devoid of water, or a diver in the deep seas without oxygen.
Also, for obvious reasons, driving in zero visibility
is a very dangerous thing.

Now, let me conclude with the existential question
famously posed by Shakespeare's Hamlet:
"To be, or not to be"? In his soliloquy the Prince
bemoans the pains and sufferings in life,
but eventually he also rejects
the alternative of death, as a frightening prospect
wherein life melts in the obscure void, dissolves
and disintegrates in mysterious nothingness.