How is space “cold” when it’s a vacuum? Isn’t temperature transferred between mass? If anything, shouldn’t you overheat when in a vacuum, because your body generates heat?
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So, heat is the transfer of energy, mainly infrared radiation. Radiation is energy that radiates from a source. Here on earth, most radiated heat comes from the sun, with some heat being thermal generated from volcanic activity or other seismic movement.
In space, the radiated heat from the sun does not travel relatively far. While the earth is like 90 million miles from the sun, that’s not very far compared to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or the other millions of small ice objects floating around out there.
Now space has lots of stuff in it, but there’s a lot of empty space between the stuff. Heat will transfer either by radiation like with the sun, or through molecular transfer, like with a metal pan handle.
This is why bodies in space might get hot when directly facing a near by star, like how hot murky gets on the day facing side, but without an atmosphere, the dark night facing side releases all the surface heat and quickly becomes ice cold.
Here on earth, or any planet with a thick atmosphere, heat gets trap because of the air molecules acting as an insulator, this is one reason why temperatures get colder as elevation increases, air thins, and insulation qualities decrease, not the only reason, just an example.
Well space lacks that thick insulation atmosphere so heat doesn’t get trapped. This is why if a person floats around in space, the sun’s radiation will burn and boil the unprotected facing side while the side facing away from the sun would be freezing.
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