Matteo Cantiello edited untitled.tex  almost 9 years ago

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There is on average one planet orbiting every star in the Universe. Our Galaxy (the Milky Way) is an immense disk of gas and stars with a diameter of about 100 000 light years, hosting about 100 billion stars and, therefore, also about 100 billion planets. Take a deep breath. Now, it turns out the Milky Way is just one of 100 billion galaxies that populate our Universe, a colossal expanding stretch of spacetime with an age of 13.7 billion years. The math is trivial: There are about 10~000~000~000~000~000~000~000 = $10^{22}$ planets out there. This number is extremely large. Apparently larger than the number of grains of sand found in every beach and every desert on Earth. But how many of these planets host life? And in particular, how many planets host intelligent life we might be able to communicate with?  Join us for our second official \textbf{\href{http://www.meetup.com/New-York-Open-Science-Meetup/}{New York Open Science Meetup}}  P.s. There will be PIZZA.