“True,” Langdon said, “and yet there are some nonreligious books that attempt to discredit Darwin from a historical standpoint—accusing him of
“That line of thought is irrelevant, Professor,” Winston said. “Whether or not Darwin was guilty of plagiarism has no bearing on the veracity of his evolutionary theory.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Ambra said. “And so, Robert, I assume if you asked Professor Gould, ‘Where do we come from?’ he would reply, without a doubt, that we evolved from apes.”
Langdon nodded. “I’m paraphrasing here, but Gould essentially assured me that there was no question whatsoever among real scientists that evolution is happening. Empirically, we can
“Did he offer any answers?” Ambra said.
“None that I could understand, but he did illustrate his point with a thought experiment. It’s called the Infinite Hallway.” Langdon paused, taking another sip of coffee.
“Yes, a helpful illustration,” Winston chimed in before Langdon could speak. “It goes like this: imagine yourself walking down a long hallway—a corridor so long that it’s impossible to see where you came from or where you’re going.”
Langdon nodded, impressed by the breadth of Winston’s knowledge.
“Then, behind you in the distance,” Winston continued, “you hear the sound of a bouncing ball. Sure enough, when you turn, you see a ball bouncing toward you. It is bouncing closer and closer, until it finally bounces past you, and just keeps going, bouncing into the distance and out of sight.”
“Correct,” Langdon said. “The question is not:
“Gould’s point being,” Winston concluded, “that just as with evolution, we cannot see far enough into the past to know how the process began.”
“Exactly,” Langdon said. “All we can do is observe that it is
“This was similar, of course,” Winston said, “to the challenge of understanding the Big Bang. Cosmologists have devised elegant formulas to describe the expanding universe for any given Time—‘T’—in the past or future. However, when they try to look back to the
Langdon and Ambra looked at each other, impressed.
“Correct again,” Langdon said. “And because the human mind is not equipped to handle ‘infinity’ very well, most scientists now discuss the universe only in terms of moments
One of Langdon’s Harvard colleagues—a solemn physics professor—had become so fed up with philosophy majors attending his Origins of the Universe seminar that he finally posted a sign on his classroom door.
In my classroom, T > 0.
For all inquiries where T = 0,
please visit the Religion Department.
“How about Panspermia?” Winston asked. “The notion that life on earth was seeded from another planet by a meteor or cosmic dust? Panspermia is considered a scientifically valid possibility to explain the existence of life on earth.”
“Even if it’s true,” Langdon offered, “it doesn’t answer how life
Winston fell silent.
Ambra sipped her wine, looking amused by their interplay.
As the Gulfstream G550 reached altitude and leveled off, Langdon found himself imagining what it would mean to the world if Edmond truly had found the answer to the age-old question: Where do we come from?
And yet, according to Edmond, that answer was only
Whatever the truth might be, Edmond had protected the details of his discovery with a formidable password—a single, forty-seven-letter line of poetry. If all went according to plan, Langdon and Ambra would soon uncover it inside Edmond’s home in Barcelona.
CHAPTER 43
NEARLY A DECADE after its inception, the “dark web” remains a mystery to the vast majority of online users. Inaccessible via traditional search engines, this sinister shadowland of the World Wide Web provides anonymous access to a mind-boggling menu of illegal goods and services.