Space Page

Stars

Stars are balls of gas floating in space that release energy, produced by nuclear reactions within their cores.

Blackholes

Blackholes are rips in the space/time continuum that are caused by a massive explosion e.g. when a star goes supernova tearing a hole in the fabric of space.

Light Years

A light year is a distance, it is as if a beam of light was traveling in space how far that light beam would travel in a year, it's aprox 6 million million miles.

Milky Way

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, this means that it has a cluster center (nucleus) containing many many mainly old stars not that far away from each other, the further u go away from the center the less compact and younger the stars are. Because there are lots of stars near each other it gives off a high gravitational pull forcing other stars in the galaxy to almost orbit it like planets orbit the sun. The Milky Way has a distance from end to end of 100,000 light years (aprox).

The Universe

The Universe is everything that exists - all matter, space and time. It extends as far as the largest telescopes can see, at least 10,000 million light years in all directions around us. The universe is thought to have formed by a gigantic explosion. The big bang, about 10 to 20 billion years ago is still expanding.

The Drake Equation

A man called Sir Frank Drake proposed a formula to work out the number

(N) of civilizations in our galaxy with the means of contacting us right now:

N=N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

N* is the number of civilizations in our galaxy.

fp is the fraction of stars with planets.

ne is the number of planets with "suitable" environments.

fl is the fraction of planets where life has arisen.

fi is the fraction of times where life develops "intelligence".

fc is the fraction of intelligent civilizations capable of calling between the stars.

fL is the fraction of the star's lifetime the civilization survives.