Yet he had a little-known sideline ?" speculations about science. In his final work Eureka ?" A Prose Poem, published in 1848, one year before he died, Poe outlined some of his theories of the cosmos. His aims were most ambitious, especially for someone who lacked formal scientific training: I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical ?" of the Material and Spiritual Universe ?" of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny. In Eureka, Poe painted a picture of a diverse, possibly infinite universe, speckled with countless stars, each composed of assorted atoms. This variety, he proposed, must have emerged sometime in the past from a far denser, unified state. Somehow, the primordial cosmic egg hatched into a remarkably diverse universe. As he wrote: