George's Secret Key to the Universe

by Stephen Hawking

  George knew there was nowhere left to run. He closed his eyes and stood with his back to his front door, his stomach churning as he prepared to meet his fate. He tried to think of something to say that might make Ringo back off. But he couldn’t come up with anything clever, and there wasn’t much point in telling Ringo he was going to get into trouble. Ringo knew that already, and it had never stopped him before. The footsteps stopped, and George opened one eye to see what was happening. Ringo and his friends had paused halfway down the path and were having some kind of conference about what to do with George.

  “No!” Ringo was saying loudly. “That’s ridiculous! Let’s squeeze him against the wall until he begs us to let him go!”

  But just as Ringo spoke, something happened. Something so peculiar that, afterward, Ringo and his friends weren’t sure if they’d dreamed it. The door of the house next to George’s flew open and out of it bounded what looked like a tiny astronaut. Everyone took a step back in astonishment as the small figure in a white spacesuit with a round glass helmet and an antenna attached to the back jumped into the middle of the road, striking a fierce, karate-style pose.

  “Get back,” said the spacesuit in a strange metallic voice, “or I will put the curse of Alien Life on you. You will turn green, and your brains will bubble and leak out of your ears and down your nose. Your bones will turn to rubber, and you will grow hundreds of warts all over your body. You will only be able to eat spinach and broccoli, and you will never, ever be able to watch television again because it will make your eyes fall out of your head. So there!” The astronaut did a few twirls and kicks that looked somehow familiar to George.

  Ringo and his friends had turned a ghostly color and were stumbling backward, their mouths hanging open. They were absolutely terrified.

  “Get into the house,” said the spacesuit to George.

  George slipped into Next Door’s house. He wasn’t scared of the little astronaut—he’d caught a gleam of bright blond hair through the glass of the helmet. It looked like Annie had saved him.

  “Phew!” The figure in the space suit followed George into the house, slamming the front door with a backward kick of a hefty space boot. “It’s hot in here,” it added, pulling off the round glass helmet and flipping out a long ponytail. It was Annie, a bit pink in the face from jumping about in the heavy suit. “Did you see how scared they were?” she said to George, beaming and wiping her forehead on her sleeve. “Did you?” She strode along the hallway, making clunking noises as she walked. “Come on.”

  “Um, yes. Thank you,” George managed to say as he trailed behind her into the same room where he’d watched The Birth and Death of a Star with Eric. He’d been so excited about coming back to see Cosmos again, but now he just felt miserable. He’d accidentally told horrible Dr. Reeper about Cosmos, when he’d promised Eric he would keep it a secret. He’d had a long, frightening journey back from school being chased by the bullies, and to cap it all off, he’d been rescued by a little girl wearing a space suit. It was turning out to be a really bad day.

  Annie, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. “What do you think?” she said to George, smoothing down the brilliant white folds of her jumpsuit. “It’s new—it just arrived in the mail.” On the floor lay a cardboard box covered in stamps, marked SPACE ADVENTURES R US! Next to it was a much smaller pink suit with sequins, badges, and ribbons sewn all over it. It was dirty and worn and covered in patches. “That’s my old suit,” Annie explained. “I had that when I was really young,” she said scornfully. “I thought it was cool to put all that stuff on it, but now I like my space suits plain.”

  “Why have you got a space suit?” asked George. “Are you going to a costume party?”

  “As if!” Annie rolled her eyes. “Cosmos!” she called.

  “Yes, Annie,” said Cosmos the computer fondly.

  “You good, beautiful, lovely, wonderful computer!”

  “Oh, Annie!” said Cosmos, his screen glowing as if he were blushing.

  “George wants to know why I have a space suit.”

  “Annie has a space suit,” replied Cosmos, “so she can go on journeys around outer space. It is very cold out there, around minus four hundred and fifty-five degrees Farenheit. She would freeze solid in a fraction of a second if she didn’t wear it.”

  TEMPERATURE

  Average temperature on Earth’s surface: 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius)

  Lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -128.2°F (-89°C), Vostok, Antarctica, July 21, 1983

  Highest temperature ever recorded on Earth: 136.4°F (58°C), Al ’Aziziyah, Libya, September 13, 1922

  Temperature on the surface of the Moon:

  Daytime average: 230°F (110°C)

  Nighttime average: -240°F (-150°C)

  Average temperature on the surface of the Sun: 9,932°F (5,500°C)

  Average temperature at the core of the Sun: 27,000,000°F (15,000,000°C)

  Average temperature of space: -454.72°F (-270.4°C)

  “Yeah, but—,” protested George. But he didn’t get far.

  “I go on journeys around the Solar System with my dad,” boasted Annie. “Sometimes my mom comes too, but she doesn’t really like it in outer space.”

  George felt really fed up. He was in no mood for silly games. “No you don’t,” he said crossly. “You don’t go into outer space. You’d have to go up in the space shuttle to do that, and they’re never going to let you on board because they wouldn’t know what was true and what you’d made up.”

  Annie’s mouth had formed a perfect O.

  “You just tell stupid stories about being a ballerina or an astronaut, and your dad and Cosmos pretend to believe you, but they don’t really,” continued George, who was hot and tired and wanted to have something good to eat.

  Annie blinked rapidly. Her blue eyes were suddenly very shiny and full of tears. “I’m not making it up,” she said furiously, her round cheeks turning even pinker. “I’m not, I’m not. It’s all true, I don’t tell stories. I am a ballerina, and I do go into outer space, and I’m going to show you.” She stomped over to Cosmos. “And,” she went on angrily, “you’re going to come too. And that way you’ll believe me.” She rummaged in a shipping box and brought out another suit, which she threw at George. “Put that on,” she commanded.

  “Uh-oh,” said Cosmos quietly.

  Annie was standing in front of Cosmos, drumming her fingers on the keyboard. “Where should I take him?” she asked.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” warned Cosmos. “What will your dad say?”

  “He won’t know,” said Annie quickly. “We’ll just go and come right back. It’ll take two minutes. Please, Cosmos!” she pleaded, her eyes now brimming over with tears. “Everyone thinks I make everything up and I don’t! It’s true about the Solar System, and I want to show George so he doesn’t think I tell lies.”

  “All right, all right,” said Cosmos hastily. “Please don’t drop saltwater on my keyboard; it rusts my insides. But you can just look. I don’t want either of you actually to go out there.”

  Annie wheeled around to face George. Her face was fierce, but the tears were still flowing. “What do you want to see?” she demanded. “What’s the most interesting thing in the Universe?”

  George thought hard. He had no idea what was going on, but he certainly hadn’t meant to upset Annie so much. He didn’t like seeing her cry, and now he felt even worse about Eric. Eric had said to him only yesterday that Annie didn’t mean any harm, and yet George had been pretty nasty to her. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to play along.

  “Comets,” he said, remembering the end of The Birth and Death of a Star and the rock that had smashed into the window. “I think comets are the most interesting things in the Universe.”

  Annie typed the word comet on Cosmos’s keyboard.

  “Put on your suit, George, quickly!” she ordered. “It’s about to get cold.” With that
, she hit the button marked ENTER …

  Once more everything went dark. The little beam of brilliant light shot out from Cosmos’s screen into the middle of the room, hovered for a second, and then started to draw a shape. Only this time it wasn’t making a window out of thin air. It was drawing something different. The beam drew a line up from the floor, then turned left, kept going in a straight line, and dropped back down to the floor again.

  “Oh, look!” said George, who could see what it was now. “Cosmos has drawn a door!”

  “I haven’t just drawn it,” said Cosmos huffily. “I’m much smarter than that, you know. I’ve made you a doorway. It’s a portal. It leads to—”

  “Shush, Cosmos!” said Annie. She had put on her helmet again and was speaking through the voice transmitter fitted inside it. It gave her the same funny voice that had so frightened Ringo and his friends. “Let George open it himself.”

  By now George had struggled into the big, heavy white suit and glass helmet that Annie had chucked at him. Attached to the back of the suit was a small tank that fed air through a tube into the helmet so he could breathe easily inside it. He put on the big space boots and gloves that Annie had thrown at him, and then he stepped forward and gave the door a timid push. It flew open, revealing an enormous expanse filled with hundreds of little lights that turned out to be stars. One in particular was much bigger and brighter than the others.

  “Wow!” said George, speaking through his own voice transmitter. When he’d watched The Birth and Death of a Star, he’d seen the events in outer space through a windowpane. But this time there didn’t seem to be anything between him and outer space. It looked as though he could just step through the doorway and be there. But where? If he took that small step, where would he be?

  “Where … ? What … ? How … ?” said George in wonder.

  “See that bright star over there, the brightest star of all those you can see?” George heard Cosmos reply. “It’s the Sun. Our Sun. It looks smaller from here than when you look at it in the sky. The doorway leads to a place in the Solar System that is much farther away from the Sun than planet Earth. There is a large comet coming—that is why I have selected this location for you. You will see it in a few minutes. Please stand back from the door.”

  George took a step backward. But Annie, who was right next to him, grabbed his suit and hauled him forward again.

  “Please stand back from the door, a comet is approaching,” said Cosmos as though he were announcing the arrival of a train at the station. “Please do not stand too close to the edge—the comet will be traveling at high speed.”

  Annie nudged George and pointed at the doorway with her foot.

  “Please stand back from the door,” repeated Cosmos.

  “When I count to three … ,” said Annie. “One.” She held up one finger. Beyond the door, George could see a large rock coming toward them, much larger than the tiny one that hit the window the day before.

  “This comet will not be stopping,” continued Cosmos. “It goes straight through our Solar System.”

  Annie held up another finger to indicate “Two.” The grayish white rock was getting closer.

  “The journey time is approximately one hundred and eighty-four years,” said Cosmos. “Calling at Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, and the Sun. On its way back, it will also call at Neptune and Pluto, now out of service as a planet.”

  “Please, my wonderful Cosmos, when we’re out there on the comet, can you accelerate the journey? Otherwise it will take us months to see the planets!” Without waiting for Cosmos to reply, Annie shouted, “Three!” grabbed George’s hand, and dragged him through the doorway.

  PLUTO

  Before August 2006 there were said to be nine planets that revolved around the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These nine celestial bodies still exist, of course, and are exactly the same as they were before, but in August 2006 the International Astronomical Union decided not to call Pluto a planet anymore. It is now called a dwarf planet.

  This is due to a change in the definition of what a planet is. There now are three rules that need to be fulfilled by any object in space in order for it to be called a planet:

  1) It has to be in orbit around the Sun.

  2) It has to be big enough for gravity to make it almost round and stay that way.

  3) Its gravity has to have attracted almost everything that is next to it in space as it travels around the Sun, so that its path is cleared.

  According to this new definition, Pluto is not a planet anymore. Is it in orbit around the Sun? Yes. Is it almost round and will it stay so? Yes. Has it cleared its path around the Sun? No. There are lots of rocks in its orbital path. So, because it failed to fulfill the third rule, Pluto has been downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet.

  The other eight planets fulfilll the three rules and so they remain planets. For planets and stars other than the Sun, an additional requirement has been agreed upon by the International Astronomical Union: The object should not be so big as to become a star itself at a later stage.

  Planets around stars other than the Sun are called exoplanets. So far, over 240 exoplanets have been seen. Most of them are huge—much bigger than the Earth.

  In December 2006 a satellite named Corot was sent into space. The quality of the detectors Corot is equipped with should allow for the discovery of exoplanets much smaller than before, down to about twice the size of the Earth. One such planet was detected using other means in 2007. It is called Gliese 581 c.

  The last thing he heard was Cosmos’s voice, calling as though from millions and millions of miles away, “Don’t jump! It isn’t safe! Come ba-a-a-a-ack.”

  And then there was silence.

  Out in the street, Ringo and his friends were still standing there, as though stuck to the pavement by some invisible force.

  “What was that?” asked a small, skinny boy who went by the name of Whippet.

  “Dunno,” said the huge boy they called Tank, scratching his head.

  “Well, I wasn’t scared,” said Ringo defiantly.

  “Neither was I,” chorused all the others quickly.

  “I was just going to have a word with that weirdo in the space suit when it got frightened and ran away.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” his friends all agreed quickly. “Course you were, Ringo. Course you were.”

  “So I think,” Ringo went on, “you”—he pointed at the newest member of his gang—“should ring the doorbell.”

  “Me?” The boy gulped.

  “You said you weren’t scared,” said Ringo.

  “I’m not!” he squeaked.

  “Then you can ring the bell, can’t you?”

  “Why can’t you do it?” asked the new boy.

  “Because I asked you first. Go on.” Ringo glared at the boy. “Do you wanna be part of this gang?”

  “Yes!” said the boy, wondering which was worse—meeting a spaceman and suffering the curse of Alien Life or making Ringo angry. He settled for the spaceman—at least he wouldn’t have to see him every day at school. He edged toward Eric’s front door uneasily.

  “Then ring the bell, Zit,” said Ringo, “or you’ll be an ex-member of this gang.”

  “Okay,” muttered Zit, who didn’t like his special new gang name much either. The others all took a few steps backward.

  The new boy’s finger hovered over the bell.

  “Ringo,” said one of the others suddenly, “what’re we gonna do if he opens the door?”

  “What’re we gonna do if he opens the door?” Ringo echoed the question while he tried to think of an answer. He lookayed up at the sky as though searching for an idea. “We’re gonna—” Even Ringo wasn’t being his usual confident, thuggish self. But before he could come up with an answer, he let out a shout of pain. “Arrrrggghhhh!” he yelped as a hand grabbed him by the ear and twisted it very hard.

  “What,” said a stern voice, “are you boys doin
g, hanging around in the street?” It was Dr. Reeper—Ringo and George’s class teacher from school. He had Ringo firmly by the ear and clearly didn’t intend to let go. The boys were very startled to see a teacher outside the school grounds—they never imagined that teachers actually had other lives to lead or had anywhere to go but their classrooms.

  “We’re not doing nothing,” squealed Ringo.

  “I think you mean, ‘We are not doing anything,’ ” corrected Dr. Reeper in a teacherly voice, “which in any case isn’t true. You are obviously doing something, and if I find out that that something has to do with bullying smaller children—like, for example, George …” Dr. Reeper stared very hard at all the boys to see if any of them flinched at the mention of George’s name.

  “No sir no sir no sir no sir,” said Ringo, who feared his ear might come off in the teacher’s hand. “We never touched him. We were running after him because he …”

  “Left-his-lunchbox-behind-at-school,” said Whippet very quickly.

  “And we wanted to give it back to him before he got home,” added Zit, the new boy.

  “And did you succeed?” said Dr. Reeper with a nasty smile, letting go of Ringo’s ear just a little bit.

  “We were just about to hand it over,” improvised Ringo, “when he went into that house.” He pointed at Eric’s front door. “So we were ringing the bell to give it to him.”

  Dr. Reeper let go of Ringo’s ear so suddenly that Ringo fell to the ground.

  “He went in there?” Dr. Reeper questioned them sharply as Ringo staggered to his feet again.

  “Yeah.” They all nodded in unison.

  “Why don’t you boys,” said Dr. Reeper slowly, “let me have George’s lunchbox and I’ll hand it back to him.” He fished around in his pocket and brought out a crumpled ten-dollar bill, which he dangled in front of their noses.

  “Who’s got the lunchbox?” questioned Ringo.