On summer nights, if you looked up at the stars from the outskirts or a mountain, you could always see a milky white band of light. That was the center of the Milky Way, called the "Milky Way" in the West and the Silver River in the East.
The Solar System was roughly 27,000 light-years from the galactic center, located in the Orion Arm, one of the Milky Way's four major spiral arms.
For life, a slightly more remote place might actually be better suited for survival. The stars in the "suburbs" were relatively sparse compared to those near the galactic center, which meant there was far less activity from various extreme celestial bodies and a correspondingly greater chance for life to survive.
At the galactic center, the brightest part, the density of stars could reach several or even dozens within a single light-year.
In the Solar System, Earth's magnetic field could just block the Sun's radiation. But an Earth located at the galactic center would struggle to withstand the combined radiation coming from every direction. This would inflict fatal damage upon the planet's surface and cause many plants and animals to vanish.
Even more terrifying were supernova explosions. Gamma-ray bursts with tremendous destructive power could release incalculable amounts of energy in an instant and effortlessly destroy everything on Earth, not to mention the black holes formed after massive stars exploded.
Many people confused alchemy with chemistry. Put simply, chemical reactions manipulated electrons. Chemical experiments dealt with the gain and loss of electrons, and electrons would dance to whatever tune you wanted.
As long as the atomic nucleus remained unchanged, the element would not change.
Transmutation used nuclear reactions to turn one element into another. The Sun turned hydrogen into helium through nuclear fusion, and replicating that technology on Earth