George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt (31 page)

This book comes with our grateful thanks to:

 

Jane and Jonathan, without whose kindness and support this book would not exist. William, for his sweetness and good humor about his mom and grandad writing another book.

Garry Parsons, for his illustrations, which capture the story line, the adventure, and the characters so perfectly.

Geoff Marcy, for his amazing lecture at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, which inspired the theme of this book.

The distinguished scientists who made their work accessible to a young audience through the essays that form
The User's Guide to the Universe
. They are Bernard Carr, Seth Shostak, Brandon Carter, Martin Rees, and Geoff Marcy. Their expert knowledge and enthusiasm for this project made it a joy to work on.

Stuart Rankin at the University of Cambridge, for writing so brilliantly about how light and sound travel.

Our friends at NASA and all the people in the different departments who took the time and trouble to talk to us about what NASA does and how it works. In particular, we would like to thank Michael Griffin, Michael O'Brien, Michael Curie, and Bob Jacobs.

Kimberly Lievense and Marc Rayman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, for their help with the wonders of robotic spaceflight.

Kip Thorne and Leonard Mlodinow at Caltech, for their advice and friendship.

Richard Garriott and Peter Diamandis at Space Adventures, for their energy and enthusiasm, and Richard for including us—and the first George book—in his real-life space adventure! Thanks to him,
George's Secret Key to the Universe
has now visited the International Space Station.

Markus Poessel, for his attention to detail and helpful comment.

George Becker and Daniel Stark at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, for their invaluable comments.

Sam Blackburn and Tom Kendall, for patiently answering endless quirky science, engineering, and computing questions.

Tif Loehnis and all at Janklow and Nesbit, UK, for their kindness and hard work on the George series. And Eric Simonoff in the New York office, for sending George to the United States once more.

At Random House, our wonderful editor Sue Cook, for her tremendous work, which brought the
Cosmic Treasure Hunt
together and made it into such a beautiful book. Lauren Buckland, for her great work on the text and the images; Sophie Nelson, for the careful copyedit; and James Fraser, for his wonderful front cover. Also Maeve Banham and her team in the Rights department, for helping to ensure that the George books truly do reach an international audience. And a special thank you to Annie Eaton, for her dedication and warmth toward the George series.

Keso Kendall, for her help with how a teenage supercomputer should speak.

All the “team”—at home and at the university—for their patience and generosity toward another George book.

Finally, but most importantly, we would like to thank our young readers—Melissa Ball, Poppy and Oscar Wallington, Anthony Redford, and Joanna Fox, for their thoughtful feedback and their very helpful comments on the
Cosmic Treasure Hunt
. And we would like to thank all the kids who asked the questions, who wrote, e-mailed, or came to lectures and were brave enough to stand up and ask something at the end. We hope this book gives you a few answers. And we hope you never stop asking “Why?”

Lucy and Stephen Hawking