Limericks

Read the gravitational-wave limericks below and submit your own here.


Limerick-011:
Such surprise was signal’s arrival,
The Black hole and Black hole inspiral,
The detection transformed
An astronomy reborn
Our historic event is archival.
_
Steve Penn, July 2025


Limerick-010:
Catch me if you can
From Scorpius X-1 comes a beat,
A star with a rhythmic repeat.
We scan night and day,
But signals will not stay
Still silence… but soon? What a feat!
_
Paola Leaci, June 2025


Limerick-009:
Two black holes all awhirl in deep space
Sent a wave at a luminal pace
That swept by the Earth
Ten-to-ninth years from birth
Then continued its spherical race
_
Peter Shawhan, June 2025


Limerick-008:
Black Hole Revelry
Two black holes in a rarity
Whirled around in hilarity
In a wild fit of depravity
They spewed out waves of gravity
Before falling to a singularity
_
Keith Riles, June 2025


Limerick-007:
I once discovered a gravitational wave,
It was a struggle to make the computer behave,
I set up the run,
The calculation was done,
But oh no, I forgot to press save.
_
Max Jones, June 2025


Limerick-006:
Redshifted
Big black holes are formed from stars
So metal poor that they are situated far
But inspiralling binaries all
May contain black holes big or small
The biggest ones lead to GWs with high SNR
_
Debnandini Mukherjee, June 2025


Limerick-005:
Case catalog
You may have heard of gravitational waves
They stretch and squeeze the 4D space
Carrying information
Of mergers and star formation
We space detectives study them case by case
_
Debnandini Mukherjee, June 2025


Limerick-004:
Postmortem
Black holes can be thought of as the dead bodies of stars
The life history of which is hidden in its parameters
The sheriff has ordered an investigation
So we must run a parameter estimation
Cuz murderers and mergers always leave their signatures...
_
Debnandini Mukherjee, June 2025


Limerick-003:
The rest is is history
Gravitational waves seemed a bit of a stretch,
until some mad scientists made a pledge:
To see space-time bend
one laser to mirrors we'll send,
and so the Nobel Prize they fetched.
_
Sascha Rieger, May 2025


Limerick-002
A decade since the gravitational wave,
A discovery about which we rave,
Why not write a rhyme,
To celebrate this time,
Submit your limerick, be brave!
_
Hannah Middleton, May 2025


Limerick-001:
There will be a mission called LISA
soon launched by NASA and ESA
Taking Einstein to space
there detecting his waves
which for a hundred years were just a teaser.
_
Sascha Rieger, May 2025