Sphere

by Michael Crichton

Ted rubbed his hands together. “You realize, of course, that even without opening that spacecraft, we have already made a major discovery of profound importance.” “What’s that?” Norman said. “We’ve shot the unique event hypothesis to hell,” Ted said, glancing at Beth. “The unique event hypothesis?” Barnes said. “He’s referring,” Beth said, “to the fact that physicists and chemists tend to believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life, while biologists tend not to. Many biologists feel the development of intelligent life on Earth required so many peculiar steps that it represents a unique event in the universe, that may never have occurred elsewhere.” “Wouldn’t intelligence arise again and again?” Barnes said. “Well, it barely arose on the Earth,” Beth said.” The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and single-celled life appeared 3.9 billion years ago—almost immediately, geologically speaking. But life remained single-celled for the next three billion years. Then in the Cambrian period, around six hundred million years ago, there was an explosion of sophisticated life forms. Within a hundred million years, the ocean was full of fish. Then the land became populated. Then the air. But nobody knows why the explosion occurred in the first place. And since it didn’t occur for three billion years, there’s the possibility that on some other planet, it might never occur at all. “And even after the Cambrian, the chain of events leading to man appears to be so special, so chancy, that bio...