eli5 – How is space cold?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

Space is not a true vacuum, and it’s cold because the few molecules that are there don’t have a lot of energy, which is by definition cold.

That said, you are not wrong in that overheating is a real problem in space. While it might be cold, there’s not enough around to give off heat via convection faster than we build it up, so both space suits and the space station have systems built in to actively shed heat in other ways – like having big metal radiators on the side of the space station that radiate heat away.

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