Great question! There's actually a lively debate about spacing after periods. The short answer is that a space is needed to make the meaning clear--we put spaces between different words, and that doesn't change because a comma or a period is being used. A long time ago, printers would use an extra space between sentences, and when I was in school I was taught to use two spaces after a period and one space after a comma. Now, it's okay to just use one space after a period. It was just something people did traditionally because printers did it and it was what people were used to reading. So, in reality, there should be TWO spaces after a period!