Mount Tambora
Thomasina's insights into thermodynamics and heat transfer, and the idea that the universe is cooling, echo the poem "Darkness" by her "real life" contemporary, Lord Byron. Written in 1816 – the "Year Without a Summer", caused by atmospheric ash from the volcano Mount Tambora erupting in the Dutch East Indies – "Darkness" depicts a world grown dark and cold because the sun has been extinguished.