I always thought that the term „temperature“ describes the amount of movement in matter on a microscope scale. The movement of atoms. So how can there be a temperature in space if there is a vacuum?
In: Planetary Science
Yeah, your intuition is quite correct. Space itself is neither really hot or cold, rather, it’s empty. Spacecraft and people on spacewalks and stuff experience extreme temperatures, but that’s mostly because of either being in the sun or not being in the sun, not from exposure to space. Actually, for spacecraft, losing heat is a much bigger issue than keeping warm, despite space being “cold in the shade” – there’s hardly anything to carry away heat so you have to rely on radiating your heat away, which is slow and depends on surface area and other factors. Stuff and people released into deep space will freeze eventually, but slowly – without any way to warm up (if they’re far from the sun) they’ll slowly but inevitably radiate all their heat away. Movies showing people and things freezing instantly are wrong
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