by Lucy Hawking
“Yes, George,” said Dr. Ling. “They pretended they wanted to watch over humanity, but that wasn’t true. They used a good motive to hide a bad one—which is a truly evil thing to do.”
“My parents don’t like science much,” confessed George. “They think it damages the planet. They’re trying to live a green life.”
“Then they are people to whom we, as scientists, should listen. We shouldn’t ignore their point of view. The planet belongs to all of us, and we need to be able to work together to make a difference.”
George felt quietly proud of his mom and dad.
Meanwhile Annie had grabbed one of the other LHC phones and was talking to Vincent, back in Foxbridge.
“You did what?” She burst out laughing. Covering the phone with one hand, she turned to George. “Vincent put Zuzubin into the Inverse Schrödinger Trap! Zuzubin was just coming to when Vincent opened the doorway and pushed him through it!”
George took the phone from Annie. “Wow! That was a cool move,” he said admiringly to Vincent. George had to admit he was grateful to Vincent, and that perhaps, just perhaps, he and Vincent might become friends in the future.
On the other end of the line Vincent was laughing. “It was nothing!” he said modestly. “Nothing like what you did, anyway. I just thought it was the safest place to keep him, until Eric gets back. I can see him on the monitor—he’s furious! But I’ve locked the door so he can’t open it again.”
“Can he escape?” asked George.
“Nope,” said Eric, who’d overheard the conversation. “Zuzubin is pretty much stuck there. Until we get back to Foxbridge tomorrow—by airplane, just like normal people. Don’t you worry, kids, I’ll deal with Zuzubin when we get back. And yes, George, I’ll track down Freddy and we’ll find him a permanent home too.”
Annie took the phone from George. “Bye, Vince!” she said happily. “See you tomorrow! We have to go now—my dad is about to run the Universe backward on Cosmos! We’re about to go back to the beginning of everything and see what it was like at the Big Bang!”
Eric sat in front of the supercomputer, pecking away at the keys, Dr. Ling peering intently over his shoulder. Annie and George pushed through the small crowd of scientists who were gathering silently around them so that they could see the screen—columns of numbers were quickly scrolling across it, while in the corner a graph with a little red line was inching across and down, heading toward the bottom of the screen. “That’s the diameter of the Universe,” Eric said, pointing. “It’s shrinking to zero as Cosmos approaches the Big Bang.”
As George watched, the line suddenly headed steeply downward, plunging almost vertically toward the bottom of the graph. “That’s inflation,” murmured Dr. Ling. “A period of exponential expansion. We are already well into the first second of the Universe’s life.”
Only the steady noise of computers and air conditioning broke the silence for the next few minutes. George couldn’t take his eyes off the little line. It was almost at the bottom of the screen—then seemed to pull up a tiny bit. It was still falling, but not quite so steeply.
George stared—and it did it again. Someone behind him took a deep breath. George glanced at Eric—and saw that he was beaming in delight, his eyes flicking back and forth over the unceasing columns of numbers.
“Not what we expected!” Eric whispered to himself. “Not what we expected at all!”
“What isn’t?” asked Annie.
Her father turned to face her, smiling in delight. “What we’ve hoped for from the start, Annie. New physics! You see, it seems there isn’t one at the Big Bang after all!” He turned back to Cosmos, and started typing rapidly.
Annie turned to George. “There isn’t what?” she asked.
George was still watching the graph. The little line was still going down, but had leveled off so much now that it was hugging the bottom of the screen, almost horizontal. “I think I know … ,” he replied.
Eric sat back with an air of triumph. “You’ll see!” he cried, then leaned forward and pressed F4. With that, a small beam of light shot out from Cosmos’s screen and sketched the shape of a window, hanging in the air above the heads of the assembled scientists, Dr. Ling and Eric and Annie and George. At first the window looked dark, with a round blurred object hanging in the center of it. But very quickly the blue and green sphere came into sharp focus, and they were looking at planet Earth, turning on its axis as it traveled along its orbit around its parent star, the Sun. Cosmos brought the window closer to the Earth, so that it could be clearly seen, with its familiar patterns of continents and oceans, with the deserts and great forests that cover the surface of this most beautiful and habitable of planets. But even as they watched, the surface of the Earth seemed to be changing shape …
Acknowledgments
A book like George and the Big Bang doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Many people are involved in making it happen. Working on the whole George series—and in particular, this third volume—has been a pleasure and a privilege. We would like to thank the team at Simon & Schuster for their dedication to publishing the George trilogy in the United States. We would especially like to say a huge thank-you to David Gale, who championed George from the very first and has seen the series through to this final adventure. We’d also like to thank very warmly Navah Wolfe, Dorothy Gribbin, Krista Vossen, Michelle Kratz, and Paul Crichton for their kindness, commitment, and professional expertise.
Gary Parsons has brought George and his friends and foes to life—this time, taking on the challenge of illustrating the Universe backward. And our distinguished researcher Stuart Rankin did a terrific and inventive job. Stuart’s contribution incudes the genius of the IST, the essay on the Big Bang, and the deceptively simple explanations of quantum theory and other bizarre and fabulous phenomena. Very dedicated thanks go to Markus Poessel at the Max Planck Institute for his excellent input into the final version of the text.
Once more a roll call of very eminent scientists came forward to explain their work to a young audience. Our thanks go to Paul Davies, Michael S. Turner, Lawrence Krauss, and Kip S. Thorne for their brilliant contributions. We’d also like to thank Roger Weiss at NASA for his photographic insights into the wonders of the Universe and all our friends at NASA for the use of the cosmic images.
And, most of all, we would like to thank our young readers for wanting another George book! Good luck on all your cosmic journeys!
Lucy Hawking
Our beautiful Earth, with our one Moon. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
The space shuttle is poised for takeoff as a meteor streaks over the Earth, reminding us of the magnitude of the Universe we aim to explore. (Stephen Clark/Spaceflightnow.com)
A setting last quarter crescent Moon and the thin line of the Earth’s atmosphere; photo taken from the International Space Station. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
Exploring the surface of the Moon in a lunar rover. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
Our Sun. (ESA/NASA/SOHO)
Twin probes beam back views of our Sun—both front and back! This amazing composite image was created in February 2011. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
LOOKING AT OUR EARTH FROM SPACE
The Semien mountains of Ethiopia, Africa. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
The Cosiguina volcano in Nicaragua, South America. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
Hurricane Danielle in August 2010. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
The horrifying results of the tsunami and earthquake in March 2011 in Japan. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
Hubble’s deepest views of the cosmos suggest that the first stars after the Big Bang lit up the heavens like a fireworks display. (Adolf Schaller for STScI)
A young glittering collection of stars—NGC3603 in the constellation Carina, twenty thousand light-years away. (NASA, ESA, R. O’C
onnell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
The Hubble Deep Space Field, the deepest portrait of the visible Universe. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
The faint red blob—an infrared image—shows one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in our Universe. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
(NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
A tiny building block of today’s giant galaxies, this compact galaxy existed only 480 million years after the Big Bang. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
In the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, astronomers use the latest technology to chart this map of dark matter—matter that cannot be seen directly. (NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.)
Looking back to the beginning of time with the LHC (Large Hadron Collider)—an international project based in Europe. © CERN
© CERN
© CERN
© CERN
The Pinwheel Galaxy—nearly twice the size of our Milky Way. (NASA/CXC/JHU/K.Kuntz et al.)
A merging pair of galaxies—the Antennae Galaxies, located about sixty-two million light-years from Earth. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI)
The Sombrero Galaxy—which looks just like a hat! There is thought to be a black hole at its very center. (NASA/Hubble Heritage Team)
The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away. The image to the left shows its double nucleus. (NASA/STScI)
(NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC) and Erin Grand (UMCP))
Our Milky Way—this artist’s impression shows the Arches star cluster deep inside. (Artist’s Concept/NASA/ESA/STScI)
Two dramatically different views of the Whirlpool Galaxy. (NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
(NASA, ESA, M. Regan and B. Whitmore (STScI), and R. Chandar (University of Toledo))
The comparative sizes of our Milky Way galaxy (left) and an ultracompact galaxy in the early Universe (right). Both have the same number of stars! (NASA, ESA, A. Feild (STScI), and P. van Dokkum (Yale University))
The formative years of spiral galaxies—shown here by four barred spiral galaxies at varied distances from the Earth.
6.4 billion light-years (NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI))
3.8 billion light-years (NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI))
5.3 billion light-years (NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI))
2.1 billion light-years (NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI))
A space oddity—Hanny’s Voorweep, the only visible part of a 300-light-year-long gas streamer stretching around a spiral galaxy. (NASA, ESA, W. Keel (University of Alabama) and the Galaxy Zoo Team)
A pillar of interstellar gas and dust within the Carina Nebula.
A visible-light view (different colors for different gases). (NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI))
An infrared view (colors assigned to different wavelengths). (NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI))
Cosmic ice sculptures in the Carina Nebula … (NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
The Eagle Nebula. (NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
The Crescent Nebula. © Daniel López, IAC
Star nurseries in the constellation of Orion. © Rogelio Bernal Andreo
An interstellar mushroom cloud—gas from a shattering supernova explosion expanding into space. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
LUCY HAWKING is the author of two novels for adults and has written for many newspapers, as well as appearing on television and radio. Lucy is the winner of the 2008 Sapio Award for Popularizing Science. She lives in the United Kingdom with her son.
STEPHEN HAWKING is director of research for the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. He is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein. His adult book A Brief History of Time has sold over 12 million copies worldwide and is available in more than thirty languages.
George and the Big Bang is their third book together about George, Annie, Eric, and, of course, Cosmos.
The following eminent scientists have also contributed to this book:
Dr. Michael S. Turner, University of Chicago
Dr. Paul Davies, Arizona State University
Dr. Kip S. Thorne, California Institute of Technology
Jacket design by James Fraser • Jacket illustrations by Garry Parsons © 2011 by Random House Children’s Books • Wormhole, conceptual artwork © MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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Also by
Lucy & Stephen Hawking
GEORGE’S SECRET KEY
TO THE UNIVERSE
GEORGE’S COSMIC
TREASURE HUNT
SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Lucy Hawking
Illustrations by Garry Parsons
Illustrations/diagrams copyright © 2011 by Random House Children’s Books
Originally published in Great Britain in 2011 by Doubleday
First U.S. Edition 2012
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The illustrations for this book are rendered in pencil that was digitally edited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hawking, Lucy.
George and the big bang / Lucy & Stephen Hawking ; illustrated by Garry Parsons. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: George tries to escape a host of problems by going to Switzerland to help his friend Annie’s father, Eric, run an experiment exploring the origins of the universe, but faces saboteurs and a mysterious message from George’s old nemesis, Reeper, there. Includes scientific essays exploring the latest theories on the origin of the universe.
ISBN 978-1-4424-4005-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-4007-4 (eBook)
[1. Science—Experiments—Fiction. 2. Big Bang theory—Fiction. 3. Sabotage—Fiction. 4. Switzerland—Fiction.] I. Hawking, S. W. (Stephen W.) II. Parsons, Garry, ill. III. Title.
PZ7.H3134Gc 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011035361