George's Secret Key to the Universe

by Stephen Hawking

  Down in the audience, Dr. Reeper also appeared to be crying, but not from pride or happiness, like the principal. He was weeping for quite a different reason. “Cosmos!” he raged under his breath. “So close! I had you in my hands! And now he’s stolen you away from me!”

  The principal helped George down off the platform and had a very brief consultation with his fellow judges—all except Dr. Reeper, that is, who was hunched in his seat, whispering to himself and casting nasty looks at George. Borrowing the gym teacher’s whistle and blowing it sharply several times, the principal brought the hall to order again.

  “A-hem!” he said, clearing his throat. “I would like to announce that this year’s winner of the interschool science presentation is, by—almost!—a unanimous vote on the part of the judges, George Greenby!” The school hall cheered. “George,” the principal continued, “has given us a wonderful presentation, and I am delighted to award him the first prize, which is this truly amazing computer, kindly donated by our sponsors.” One of the other judges produced a large cardboard box from under the table and handed it to George.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you!” said George, who was rather overwhelmed, both by the experience and by the size of the box he had just been given. He staggered down the center aisle toward the exit, clasping his prize in both hands. Everyone smiled as he passed—except for one group of boys sitting at the end of the row, who were deliberately not clapping. They sat there with their arms folded, glaring at George.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this,” hissed Ringo as George passed him.

  George ignored him and hurried on until he reached Eric, Annie, and Susan.

  “You did it, George! I’m so proud!” said Eric, trying to hug George around the huge cardboard box.

  “George! You were great,” said Annie shyly. “I never thought you would be so good on stage. And your science was pretty amazing too.”

  “Did I get it all right?” George asked her, feeling worried as Eric took the large box from him. “I mean, when I said ‘billions,’ should I have said ‘tens of millions’? And when I talked about Jupiter, I thought maybe I should have said—”

  “No!” said Annie. “You got everything right, didn’t he, Dad?”

  Eric nodded and beamed at George. “Especially the last part. You got that really, really right. And you won first prize as well. You must be very happy.”

  “I am,” said George, “but there’s just one problem. What are my parents going to say when I come home with a computer? They’re going to be so angry.”

  “Or they might be so proud,” said a voice.

  George looked around and saw his dad, standing next to Susan. His jaw dropped. “Dad?” he said. “Were you here? Did you hear my speech about science?”

  “I did,” said his dad. “Your mother wanted me to come and pick you up from school—she was worried about you this morning—and I got here in time to hear your talk. I’m very glad I did, George. Because you’re right, we shouldn’t be scared of science. We should use it to help us save the planet and not close our minds to it.”

  “Does that mean I can keep my computer?” squeaked George.

  George’s dad smiled. “Well, I think you deserve it. Only an hour a week, though, or my homemade generator won’t be able to keep up.”

  There was a sudden commotion behind them, and their little group was rudely pushed to one side by Dr. Reeper, who was charging through the crowd in a great hurry. Following him were Ringo and the other members of his gang. They all looked mad.

  George watched them go and turned to Eric. “Aren’t you going to do something about Greeper? Like punish him?”

  “Um, no,” said Eric sadly. “I think Graham’s punished himself quite enough already. Best leave him alone. I doubt our paths will cross again.”

  “But … but … ,” said George. “Eric, I wanted to ask you—how did Greeper know where to find you? I mean, you could have gone anywhere in the world, but he was waiting for you here, and he was right. How did he know?”

  “Ah well. The house next door to you,” said Eric. “It belonged to my old tutor, the man in the photo with the beard.”

  “But he disappeared!” said George.

  “He only sort of disappeared,” replied Eric. “I got a letter from him some time ago, saying he was going away on a very long journey, and he didn’t know if or when he’d be back. He told me he wanted me to have his house, in case I ever needed somewhere to work on Cosmos. He couldn’t have imagined that Graham would lie in wait for me here, for all these years.”

  “Where did the old man go?” asked George.

  “He went … ,” Eric started.

  “Home,” said Susan very firmly. “Can I give you a lift?” she asked George’s dad.

  “Oh no!” he said. “I’ve got my bike. I’m sure we can balance the computer on the handlebars to get it home.”

  “Dad!” huffed George. “Please! We might drop it.”

  “I don’t mind running George home,” said Susan. “It might be cramped, but it’s amazing what you can fit inside a Mini.”

  • • •

  Back at George’s house that night, Eric, Susan, and Annie all stayed for a delicious supper of home-grown vegetables eaten by candlelight at the kitchen table. Eric and George’s dad got into a long and very enjoyable argument about whether it was more important to look for a new planet or to try and save this one, while Susan helped George to set up his shiny new computer.

  Annie went out into the garden and fed Freddy, who was looking rather lonely in his sty. When she came back from chatting to the pig, she spent the evening dancing around George’s mom, showing her all her ballet steps and telling her lots of tall stories, which George’s mom pretended to believe.

  After they went home, leaving with lots of promises of eco-warriors talking to scientists at their conferences and trips to The Nutcracker together, George went upstairs to his room. He was very tired. He got into his pajamas but he didn’t close the curtains—he wanted to look out of the window as he lay under his comforter.

  It was a clear evening, and the night sky was studded with brilliant, twinkling stars. As he watched, a shooting star fell across the dark background, its long, shiny tail blazing with light for a few seconds before it melted into nothing.

  Perhaps the shooting star is a piece of the comet’s tail, thought George as he fell asleep. As a comet passes the Sun, it warms up and the ice on it starts to melt …

  © JERRY LODRIGUSS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  As the Earth’s moon rises just before dawn, Earthshine (sunlight reflected back from the Earth) gently lights up the nightside of the Moon.

  © JASON WARE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Although the Moon is usually thought of as gray, it actually has color. This image has been enhanced to reveal the subtle hues produced by the different geological features of the Moon.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  This far side of the Moon can never be seen from Earth. This picture was taken by the Apollo 16 spacecraft in 1972.

  © J-C CUILLANDRE/CANADA-FRANCE-HAWAII TELESCOPE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Because of its distinctive shape, the dark nebula at the center of this image is called the Horsehead Nebula. It is silhouetted against an emission nebula (called IC 434), which is bright because the hydrogen gas inside it is being lit up by hot stars. It takes light 1,500 years to reach the Earth from there.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/J. HESTER & P. SCOWEN, ASU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/J. HESTER & P. SCOWEN, ASU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  These pillar-shaped cosmic clouds are made of hydrogen and dust. They contain undeveloped stars and are called the Pillars of Creation.

  © NASA/JPL-CALTECH/S. STOLOVY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The center of the Milky Way. This cannot be seen with our eyes because there is cosmic dust in front of it. But this picture was taken in infrared light, which allows us to see hundreds of thousands of hidden stars.
Within the white dot at the center is a supermassive black hole.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  An ultraviolet-light picture of the Sun. In the top right of the picture, a hot cloud of plasma (gas) is erupting. This kind of eruption is called a “solar prominence.”

  © ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN OBSERVATORY/DSS/DAVID MALIN IMAGES

  Proxima Centauri (the red dot at the center) is the closest star to the Sun. Light takes 4.22 years to travel from there to the Earth. It takes 8.31 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/J. MORSE, U. COLORADO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  At the center of these two giant lobes lies a star called Eta Carinae, which is about a hundred times bigger than the Sun. Light takes about eight thousand years to travel from Eta Carinae to the Earth.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/C. O’DELL, VANDERBILT U. ET AL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula (a set of dust shells cast off by a star toward the end of its life). It takes about 650 years for light to travel to the Earth from the Helix Nebula.

  © NASA/ESA/STScI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The star at the center of this planetary nebula (NGC 2440) is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of 360,000°F (200,000°C). As it nears the end of its life, it sheds its outer layers, creating the surrounding clouds of gas. Light takes about four thousand years to travel from NCG 2440 to the Earth.

  © JOHN THOMAS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  In 1996, passing within 9.4 million miles (15 million km) of the Earth, Hyakutake was one of the brightest comets of the twentieth century.

  © ROYAL GREENWICH OBSERVATORY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Halley’s Comet is visible from the Earth every seventy-six years or so. This photo was taken in 1910.

  © RICHARD J. WAINSCOAT, PETER ARNOLD INC./SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Halley’s Comet in 1986.

  © MICHAEL JÄGER AND GERALD RHEMANN

  Comet SWAN is unlikely to come near the Earth again. Its path suggests it will shoot off into interstellar space, away from the Sun, for a very long time before possibly reaching another star.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  On January 12, 2005, a spacecraft named Deep Impact was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida (right). It contained an “impactor” (left), which was sent to hit a comet named Tempel 1, to discover what comets are made of. Comets are relics from the early Solar System, so knowing what they are made of provides information about the history of the Solar System.

  © NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UMD/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Picture of comet Tempel 1 taken by the impactor as it cruised toward its target at more than 22,000 mph (36,000 km/h). The collision occurred on July 4, 2005.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  1.67 seconds after the impactor hit comet Tempel 1, the Deep Impact spacecraft took this picture of the explosion on the surface.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The largest and most detailed true-color image of Saturn ever produced.

  © JOHN CHUMACK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The view of Saturn when seen from the Earth through a small portable telescope.

  © NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It is the only known moon in the Solar System to have a thick atmosphere. This is an infrared-light picture.

  © NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Rhea is the second largest moon of Saturn. It doesn’t appear to be geologically active.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Iapetus is the third largest moon of Saturn. The heavily cratered region that dominates this image is known as Cassini Regio.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Dione is the fourth largest moon of Saturn. Its surface is mainly composed of water ice.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Tethys, the fifth largest moon of Saturn, is also probably composed of water ice.

  © NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  This is an ultraviolet, green, and infrared composite image of Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn. Its surface temperature is about –328°F (–200°C), but there may be water underneath the surface.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. The black dot on the right is the shadow of one of Jupiter’s moons. The Great Red Spot (on the left) is a storm that has been observed from Earth for more than three hundred years.

  Io

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Europa

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Ganymede

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Callisto

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The largest moons of Jupiter. Io is known to have intense volcanic activity. Europa is thought to hide an ocean of liquid water more than 60 miles (100 km) deep underneath an icy crust. There are ancient impact craters on Ganymede, and erosion processes have been detected on Callisto.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  A Martian sunset seen by the Mars exploration rover Spirit on May 19, 2005.

  © J. BELL (CORNELL UNIVERSITY)/M. WOLFF/HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM/STScI/AURA/NASA/ESA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Mars. The orange area in the center is a large dust storm, and the bluish white areas at the top and left are water ice clouds.

  © JOHANNES SCHEDLER/AUSTRIA

  Mars with its moons.

  © EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY/DLR/FU BERLIN (G. NEUKUM)/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  The Martian moons are too small to be round. This is Phobos, the largest and innermost.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  And this is Deimos, the smallest and outermost.

  © NASA/JPL-CALTECH/CORNELL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  This panorama of Mars is from the top of Husband Hill, a peak in the Columbia Hills, which are named in memory of the astronauts who died in the space shuttle Columbia. It was taken in August 2005 by the exploration rover Spirit.

  © FRIEDRICH SAURER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Computer artwork of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. No spacecraft has yet reached any of the dwarf planets.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/A.STERN, SWRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Computer-processed image from the Hubble Space Telescope of the dwarf planet Pluto.

  © FRIEDRICH SAURER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Computer artwork of the dwarf planet Eris. Eris is the largest and outermost of the three dwarf planets in the Solar System.

  © ROBERT GENDLER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  True-color image of the Andromeda galaxy. It is the closest major galaxy to our own and the largest in terms of the number of stars it contains. Like the Milky Way, it is a spiral galaxy. Light takes about 150,000 years to travel across Andromeda, and 2.5 million years to reach the Earth.

  © EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Computer-enhanced image of a possible extrasolar planet (in red) orbiting around a very hot ball that is not big enough to become a star (in white). The planet is thought to be five times the mass of Jupiter, and this picture could be the first image of an exoplanet ever taken.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Optical image of a giant elliptical galaxy named NGC 4261 (center). At the galaxy’s core there is a supermassive black hole about half a billion times bigger than our Sun.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/F. FERRARESE, JHU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Center of NGC 4261 (see previous page). Surrounding the black hole is a disk of cold, dark dust approximately 800 light-years in width. It is believed that there is a massive or supermassive black hole at the core of most galaxies.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/R. VAN DER MAREL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  This ring of dust hides a massive black hole at the center of another galaxy, called N
GC 7052. The bright white spot at the center is light from stars crowded around the black hole due to its powerful gravitational pull.

  © NASA/ESA/STSCI/HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  This prominent blue jet is streaming out from the core of a giant elliptical galaxy called M87. The jet is made of electrons and other particles accelerated from around a supermassive black hole at the center of that galaxy.

  © MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  Computer artwork of the Solar System. Shown here are a section of the Sun (on left); the eight planets (l–r): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and the three dwarf planets, in red boxes (l–r): Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. The distance between the objects is not to scale or nothing would be seen except the Sun; however, the relative sizes are correct.

  © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

  A satellite image of the Earth.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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  Text copyright © 2007 by Lucy Hawking

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