In the Los Angeles Times of Thursday 22 February 1968, astrophysicists at Cal Tech reported some hundred billion galaxies in the universe, each holding some hundred billion stars, and nothing anywhere resembling Earth. Neville read it the next evening as an argument against man's fear of his own weapons - "they are only little firecrackers" - and for the singularity of this planet: "The only thing in the universe that could cradle this biological experiment called Man is right here in our small planet."