By: Barbara Gail Montero

General relativity
a world of gently curved spacetime
a seamlessly woven fabric
warped by the massive objects
that set our spiral galaxy in motion

its articulation is legato
its purview, the large, the stately, the sublime

Quantum mechanics
a world of discrete,
jumpy,
jagged events
a discontinuous world of Heraclitean Becoming
rather than Aristotelian Being

its strings are plucked rather than bowed
its purview, the very small—the nano, the pico

General relativity’s language is geometry
it rules over its four-dimensional spacetime manifold
with absolute authority
it is a game of skill.

Quantum theory is a game of chance
Its players, irresolute and unpredictable
Outcomes, undecidable

Whereas general relativity uses mathematics
to describe a world beyond its equations
the quantum universe is nothing more than equations
its inhabitants,
matrices
probability amplitudes
imaginary numbers