Friday, December 06, 2013

Technically its not cold in space

Wow this just blew my mind, doing research on space and cooling etc......only to realize that obviously space is a vacuum.... and because it is a vacuum there is nothing to "pass off" heat to (eg you don't have "wind" blowing against you that can allow heat to "escape").

What this means is that although "pure space" is only 3 degrees kelvin (its not zero kelvin because of background radiation so even if something isn't in direct view of the sun (eg dark side of a planet) it will never get to zero - that if a warm body was "thrown into space" doesn't get super cold very fast but instead takes time to lose its heat through "radiant" heat only.

There are very few molecules to "pass off" heat like wind/touch etc does here on earth.

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