Beverly Keister, age 15 y of Peoria, Ill,, for her question:

Is there light above the darkness of night?

Our earth is a sizeable globe suspended in space. On all sides it is surrounded by the star spattered heavens, And the stars send forth light, greeting each other across the vast oceans of space. They light up the whole heavens that reach out around our globe in all directions.

In the star lit, star spangled heavens, a day and night period on earth is a very small event. It occurs because the earth rotates on its axis as it orbits around the sun. The glory of the sun reaches us as daylight because we are only some 93 million miles away from it. The nearest star to the sun is some 26 million, million miles away. That is 26 followed by twelves zeros.

As the earth orbits the sun, it spins or rotates on its axis. The sun is almost in the center of the earth's orbit. As it rotates, the earth faces the sun with first one side, then another. The side facing the sun is bathed with streaming sunbeams   the radiant energy from the sun which we call daylight.

But the earth is a solid ball. The light from the sun cannot penetrate through it, nor can it bend around the other side. The far side of the earth is in shadow, the shadow of night.

On a sunny day, a host of sunbeams strike your face when you turn towards the sun. You may get a tan or a crop of lovely freckle. Freckles are Andy's favorite beauty spots and he has the idea that every freckle comes from the kiss of an affectionate sunbeam. Whether you believe this or not, let's not argue the point because Andy goes for freckles in a big way.

Now lets turn around with our backs to the sun. No sunbeams shine on our faces,   no tan, no freckles. But, we see our shadows lying there on the ground. Our solid round earth also has a shadow and, like your shadow, it points away from the sun. .

Actually, the earth has two shadows, one inside the other. The darker shadow is the umbra and it tapers from the night side of the earth about 859,000 miles into space. This is less than a million miles, no distance at all in the starlit, star spangled heavens, The earth's penumbra is a paler but wider shadow4 It fans out into space from the night side of the globe,

At night, when our side of the earth is facing away from the sun, we are facing the earth's shadow. In the vast heavens, it is a very, very small shadow   far too short to reach the nearest star. Once in a while, when the moon comes inside the earth's shadow, we have a lunar eclipse. Otherwise, everything is lit with the brilliance which lights up the entire heavens, day and night. So the answer is yes, there is light beyond the darkness of our little night. The sun is shining, even on the other side of the earth and our little shadow is too small to blot out a. single star