When construction began, Las Vegas thought it was a hoax. It had all been a rumour for years. And now it was about to become true. Plus: Are there really construction workers building? Or are they aliens? The Sphere has touched down on our Earth, the outrageous entertainment planet in the middle of Nevada. We should go there. Now.

If you were 8 years old and your parents pulled you out of bed at 4 a.m., staggered you to the TV, and you couldn’t believe that the promise to wake you up was actually kept, then you stared at the screen and saw nothing but streaks running through it, hearing only that American voice. You were in your Fred Flintstone pyjamas on that 16th of July 1969, in an incredible moment: barefoot, with the extra woollen blanket and a sofa cushion pressed against you for safety, you landed on the moon with them. With Neil. One big step for mankind. And for me, the little boy. A new dimension.

And now, 54 years later, the time has come again. With one huge difference: back in 1969, we flew towards the future at 35,000 km/h—in words: at thirty-five thousand kilometres per hour.

Now it has come to us. The Sphere is here. It has landed. As a planet on our planet. Where the dark Nevada desert suddenly becomes so bright and glaring, in Las Vegas. Apple, the Mac, the iPhone, the Internet, and the whole digital revolution are harbingers of this force, this extraordinariness. Nothing more. They were and are the result of a chain of technical evolution in whose development one could watch and participate. Amazed and astonished, to be sure, when the Nokia folding mobile phone gave way to a phone with an Apple logo that could do more than one’s own PC, but you followed along, going with it. You were modernized along with it, you were an upload. The Sphere, the incomprehensibly large sphere that rises two-thirds out of the earth into the sky, is not an evolution. It did not offer a way of growing along. It only knew its way: to strike out into the world and be there, inviting us to new definitions.

When Bono Vox, lead singer of Irish rock band U2, first entered the inside of the sphere to see the place he and his bandmates had to inaugurate with 25 consecutive performances, he didn’t say a word.

And when The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen were silent, as they so often are because their lead singer was about to do the talking, as he always does, and even after 25 minutes nothing came, The Edge ventured:

“Bono, what’s going on?” And now Bono said something for the first time. He said:

“Are you sure we can do this thing?”

He, the leader of the band with the biggest, most incredible stadium tours, with the highest audience records in music history, redefining stadium concerts with the 360° stage, suddenly felt smaller than the venue. At the push of a button, the inner circle became the barren mountains of Joshua Park. Next thing you know, the four Irishmen were standing in the waves of an ocean. And in the same moment, they were back in the canals of Venice, and bang, it became a slumbering dog as big as a house. The Sphere played with them. And Bono checked it out, and in that second got a grip on the enormity for the first time: ‘We have to play back! We have to play better than we ever have before. It’s playing with us, and we’re going to play with it. It wants this!’ The rest of the band took a breath. This was their Bono! And of course, he was right again.

“It’s going to take us a few gigs. But we’re going to step up. So that eventually we’ll be as big as this thing itself.”

And that’s exactly what’s happening in Las Vegas right now, night after night. And U2, the biggest band in the world alongside the Stones and Coldplay, has come a long way by now. Four days ago, after 11 concerts, the band played their best concert there so far, and they say they will still get better.

And here we are, already in the middle of the central effect of The Sphere, in the central concern of this wonder of the world: it wants to challenge us. It wants to remind us, in its boundlessness, of our own. To remind us that it exists.

And that we should finally stop being afraid of ourselves and of life. To make us realize that we ourselves are a miracle, with our boundless planet on our necks: our head, with our brain.

Again and again, throughout the day, the sphere changes its appearance. One moment it’s a moon, then a pumpkin, then a cornfield, then a giant pupil, and again and again, a smiley in all imaginable human moods. When teeing off on the 12th hole of the Las Vegas Golf Course, 70-year-old golfer Larry Neswick looked directly at The Sphere.

As the thing was under construction for months and grew higher and higher, he had nevertheless grown accustomed to it. One more major construction site down there in the Las Vegas valley.

So what. But as it got higher and higher, finally finished, and started its show on the first days of testing, he couldn’t get anything done from hole 12, the point on the course that offers a view of the city. He couldn’t tee off with that alien grinning at him or constantly taking on new shapes.

Since Larry was not only an avid golfer but also one of the club’s biggest donors, the club president took heart and called the Sphere operators. The answer was: ‘What would you like?’ When they passed that on to the baffled Larry, he said quite quickly, ‘Lawn and woods.’ So he got lawn and forest. The Sphere got Larry’s tee times, and from then on, all he sees at hole 12 in the distance is lawn and woods.

Just as it invites us to play the game of possibilities outside, The Sphere does the same inside. All worlds, all moments, all states of mind, all dreams—everything that constitutes human perception—is possible.

Whatever comes to mind can be realized. And you can let yourself be inspired by the immeasurable possibilities that this place offers. U2 is doing this right now, to the best of its ability, and each of the 18,000 viewers every evening is doing the same. You grow together.

112 metres high, the tallest spherical building in the world, 54,000 LED lights, 2.3 billion euros.

In the beginning, seven years ago, there was a simple sketch—a circle with a stick figure in it. A vision. And after that, hard work.

James Dolan, the chairman of Madison Square Garden and owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers, had drawn the sketch.

Together with David Dibble, CEO of MSG Ventures, he wanted to revolutionize the entertainment industry of this world.

‘Our plan was a completely new medium,’ Dolan says.

‘When you’re in Sphere, you’re not told what to watch. The audience decides what they want to focus on.’

Surrounding the interior of the 157-metre-wide Sphere is a high-definition LED screen—the largest in the world. Above the 17,600 spectator seats hovers another wonder: the world’s largest concert-grade audio system, with 1,586 speaker modules, 167,000 speakers, countless amplifiers and processing channels, and 300 mobile speaker modules.

On the outside, The Sphere is equipped with 1.2 million hockey-puck-sized LEDs, programmable for every otptic effect imaginable.

The shell was built by Kalzip, a company from Koblenz in teamwork with the dream makers Dolan & Dibble.

And while U2 is still playing, the venue is already preparing for its next future: the screening of “Postcard from Earth”, a production directed by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky in which you will leave this earth for 2 hours.

And then, in the middle of the day, you’re walking towards your car at a diner on the outskirts of Las Vegas and you’re towered over by The Sphere, which is now a 112-metre-high smiley face winking at you.

And the question comes in the same second: Is this perhaps much more than the sum of its incredible innovations? Is it a postcard from the universe? A first real message from other planets?

Or is it much more a message to ourselves? Let us say to those who marvel, and to those who, with their vision, their skill, their incredible abilities, their perseverance, their tenacity, and their genius, have made this round miracle possible—let us all say that we should never stop dreaming. This appeal, so often proclaimed and sometimes already profane due to its overuse, has just been given unprecedented force with the Sphere. Because this time, the moon landed with us.

More information and tickets here.