Matteo Cantiello edited We_are_thinking_creatures_living__.tex  about 9 years ago

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We are thinking creatures living on a planet orbiting a pretty common star in a pretty common galaxy. Our home planet has been around for about 4.5 billion years, while the Universe has about 13.7 billion years. We \href{https://www.authorea.com/10997}{just learned} that there are some other 1~000~000~000~000~000~000~000 = $10^{21}$ planets potentially similar to the Earth in the cosmos, a number larger that the amount of \href{http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky}{ grains of sand} found in every beach and every desert on Earth. \textbf{ Are we alone?}\\ alone?}  To answer this question in 1961 scientist Frank Drake came up with his famous equation, which I started discussing in the \href{https://www.authorea.com/11048}{previous post} of this series. The Drake equation allows to calculate the number $N$ of communicative civilizations in our Galaxy we might be able to contact. In its 2015 form it reads:  $N \approx 2\, f_l \, f_i \, f_c \, L$