Is there life in space?

One of the questions that get asked most often when it comes to space is, 'Does life in space exist?' The thing is, that it is hard to believe that there is no life in space. Due to the fact that there are so many different planets in the galaxy alone, there has to be at least one or two other planets that support life like Earth does. Astronomers have only scratched the surface when it comes to exploring other planets in space.

The people who study different stars and look for different planets haven't even discovered a fraction of the stars that are in the universe. In 2016 scientist have discovered around 2000 of the billions of planets in the galaxy. But we're not just limited to the Milky Way, there are trillions of other galaxies in the universe, each one could possibly harbor a planet that is able to support life like our home, the Earth. The process of finding planets is also getting quicker as time goes on, any day could be the day when we find like in outer space.

There are a lot of requirements for a planet to be deemed habitable for life. One of the biggest requirements is that the planet needs to be big enough, so it has its own atmosphere. Another requirement is that the planet is in the habitable zone, meaning it isn't too close or far from the sun. The reason why this is, is because of water. If a planet with water is too close to the sun, all the water will evaporate away, and if the planet is too far from the sun, all of the water will freeze over. Even with requirements like these to be met for a planet to be habitable, space is so large that there must be other planets that can support life. It might take a while, but scientists will eventually find another planet that can support life.

Stars

Heliocentric solar system By: RuM

Summary: If one were to look up into the night sky, they would notice something, the stars. In the vastness of space, there are these big balls of fire that shine so brightly you can be can see them from trillions of miles away. The thing is these stars are doing something that most people wouldn't imagine when thinking about stars. That thing is nuclear fusion, this is when stars use a little bit of energy to fuse 4 hydrogen atoms, into one helium atom. This is why stars shine, because of all the energy being used to do this over and over again.

SP2: Developing and using models
Due to the fact that space is so big, we had to rely on models quite a bit to help us understand the importance of various things in space, such as stars. We made a small model of the solar system that was about 5 feet in length, which is much shorter than the millions of miles that our solar system covers. We used the paper to gauge the relative distance of all of the planets to each other, including the Sun and the Kuiper belt, which were both at the edge of the solar system.

XCC: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity

When talking about space, one has to acknowledge how vast it really is, the Earth may seem to be a big place for some, but just looking at our solar system, one can see how Earth is really just a speck in the entirety of space. The sun is one million times larger than the Earth, and it is no where near the biggest star in the galaxy. It takes light, the thing that can almost travel instantly 4 years to get to the nearest star to our solar system.

Seasons

Axial Tilt of Earth By: GregorDS

Summary: Throughout the year, seasons come and go, but depending on where a person lives, the time of the year seasons start and end changes. This is due to the tilt of the Earth causing different parts of the earth to get different amounts of sunlight. The Earth has a tilt of 23.5 degrees and depending on where the Earth is relative to the sun, each hemisphere might be in a different season than one another. If the Earth is tilted in a way that the northern hemisphere gets more sun, then it is spring or summer there, and vice-versa.

SP2: Developing and using models
We used various online models to represent how the Earth's tilt affects when and where each season occurs in a year. We also used physical models to help give us a better understanding on what season it is based off of how much sunlight is hitting each part of the Earth at a certain point in time. This also helped us better understand the relationship between sunlight, the poles and the equator.

XCC: Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
When looking at things on an astronomical scale can be quite weird, because things so large that can barely be described by our units of measurement can fit right in the palm of someones hand. This doesn't just go for physical objects, things like years can pass in a matter of seconds. There are also problems with scaling down things that are that big, because you have to get the scale factor just right so the model wont be incorrect.