ARNO CREELMAN'S DEEP THOUGHTS Gravity is a force that pulls objects like stars and planets together The bigger the mass the stronger the pull So why is our universe expanding with galaxies moving away from each other What goes up must come down
ARNO SLAPPED A pound of wet clay into the shape of a ball then plopped the ball onto his desk with a satisfying whump He peered at the open astronomy book beside his lump of clay to read the instructions once again Divide the clay into ten equal parts Okay-dokey Arno whispered He was being quiet so that he could hear his dad’s yellow-and-red Sony transistor radio It was 1961 The Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States was in full swing Over the past few years artificial satellites had been launched The Saturn I rocket meant to carry human beings into deep space was well under construction Soviet pilots had even flown into low Earth orbit as test trials Which country would be the first to safely land
someone on the Moon and bring them back was anybody’s guess And in all this excitement a brand-new observatory was opening the following night in Arno’s hometown It had been built in a wide field on the outskirts where there was no light pollution to interfere with the powerful telescope housed in its dome Arno desperately wanted to go to the opening not only because he planned to become an astronomer when he grew up but also because his hero Jean Slayter-Appleton was flying in as the honored guest to cut the ribbon Jean Slayter-Appleton wrote a weekly column about astronomy in the newspaper Her column was called Clear Skies She ended every article with those two words Clear skies were what every astronomer wished for when they set up their telescopes to point at the stars Arno clipped all of her articles for his notebook which contained his deep thoughts about how the universe worked He would quote fascinating facts
from her column whenever he got the chance Arno paused to listen to the radio The station was giving away three invitations to attend the opening of the observatory for contest winners and their guests All he had to do was be the first to call in with the correct answer to an astronomy-related question that the announcer would ask some time throughout the morning For now only surf rock music about girls and cars blared from the transistor radio Arno turned back to his lump of clay and divided it up like the instructions told him to do He read from his book again Mash six of the parts together and put that on Jupiter’s sheet of paper Arno had already spread out nine sheets of paper on his desk He had written the name of a planet on each one He mashed the six lumps together as instructed and set it on Jupiter’s paper He paused to listen to the radio More surf rock
