So I admit I was a bit too much of a coward to come to the House of Studies and talk about

to mystic philosophy. So there won't be that much of it in the talk, though Thomas will, of course,

make an appearance here and there. It's impossible to completely avoid them. And instead, I will

take my starting point in something I feel more comfortable

in talking about, which is the science of exoplanets and trying to assess the likelihood of

finding life or where to look for extraterrestrial life. And what is amazing is to live in an age where we are seeing planets around

other stars like there's nobody's business. And this, of course, makes impossible to not think

about which ones, if any of these planets, that might be inhabited. And it's very nice for someone who has,

who is indeed not just a group beyond the Dominican order, which I am,

but also have been interested in philosophy and theology

long before I was a Catholic.

The topics that I have chosen, or maybe have chosen me,

providentially do, I think, demand that we ask also some sometimes tough,

metaphysical and theological questions. So I'll try to tie in that where it makes sense

in this presentation. But let's start where, with the first word of this talk, so exoplanets. So in the past

couple of decades, something really amazing has happened, which is that when we used to look up

on the star sky, it's one of many beautiful pictures, and this will be a pretty visual presentation.

But what's happened is that we

used to look up to this beautiful but somewhat cold and distant star sky and starting about two decades

ago and continuing right now this guy has come alive that almost every one of these stars harbor at least

one planet around them. So each of these stars, they're not just stars, they are stellar systems,

there are words of their own. So we have these exoplanets. That that the science of these exoplanets

...