The Nature of Space - Part 1

I've been working on a netbook that describes my
campaign universe, and most recently on a chapter
describing the cosmology.  It is a blend between the
Spelljammer universe and the Warhammer 40k one, but
the warhammer part is distant and less focused upon.
Anyway, I'd like to post it here for comments and
constructive criticism.  It was big, so I broke it
into four pieces.  Feel free to tear it apart, say
waht you feel and let me know what you all think.

- Coyote

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The Nature of Space - Part 1
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The Structure of Space and the Known Universe - To
understand space, one must first understand its
"geography" or how it is arranged. On a basic level
the universe is made up of countless clouds of gas and
stars. As one expands the scope of one's view it can
be seen that these stars and gas clouds are often
arranged into spiral or disk shaped arrangements of
millions of stars that are called spiral galaxies.
These galaxies are usually orbited by smaller,
spherical or irregular shaped galaxies called cluster
galaxies or irregular galaxies. When one expands the
scope of one's view even more, one sees that spiral
and cluster galaxies tend to group together into even
more massive arrangements called galaxy clusters.
Galaxy clusters contain from dozens to thousands of
galaxies, and are either spiral shaped or irregualarly
shaped, like the galaxies that make them up. On an
even larger level galaxy clusters group together into
hollow, bubble shaped arrangements, with many galaxy
clusters surrounding an empty central space, or
galactic void. These are called galaxy bubbles. When
the known universe is observed from the farthest
perspective imaginable it looks like a foamy sea of
galaxy bubbles, or a huge web (see the picture in the
upper corner - it is of the uniiversal web of galaxies
with a single galactic cluster enlaged inside the
inset circle). These bubbles connect together into a
web-like arrangement, with vast empty voids of varying
sizes surrounded by galaxy walls (an arrangement of
galaxy clusters that resembles an unimaginably large
wall) or galactic threads (an arrangement of galaxy
clusters that resembles a massive thread) spreading
out between them.

Space is massive, and information is known about only
a tiny, small handfull of galaxies in two or three
seperate galaxy clusters. The known sections of these
galaxies is only a tiny, infinitesmaly small fraction
of the universe, and the inhabitants of the known
sections of seperate galaxies almost never interact
with each other because of the immense distances that
seperate them.  The better known galaxies are the
Milky Way (a spiral galaxy), the Mystaran Galaxy (a
spiral galaxy), the Dragon Galaxy (a dragon-shaped
cluster galaxy), Larothia (the spiral galaxy that the
Dragon Galaxy orbits), and Arcane Space (a spiral
galaxy). The Dragon Galaxy, Larothia, and Arcane Space
are all in the same galaxy cluster, but the Milky Way
is in another cluster far, far away from these three
galaxies. The Larothian Galaxy is unexplored and
poorly understood, and is known mainly because the
Dragon Galaxy orbits it. The Milky Way, Mystaran
Galaxy, Dragon Galaxy, and Arcane Space Galaxies are
better known, because humans live in these three
galaxies and they sometimes interact. It is unknown
which galaxy humans first evolved in, but they have
somehow spread to these three galaxies and have
extensively explored the portions of them where they
live.

This is how they universe is arranged physically, in
three dimensional space. But to understand how travel
between stars is possible one must look at space in a
different way, not on a scale from large to small, but
rather in a more inter-dimensional or layered manner.
To understand space travel, one must understand the
difference between "Normal Space" and "Aether Space."

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