The sun warms up our planet but space is cold. If I lit a candle and stood 20 feet away, I could see the light but not feel the warmth. So, why do we feel warmth from the sun but space isn’t warmed by it?
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The reason you feel warm right now is because you are surrounded by air, which is radiating its stored heat from the sun into you from all sides. In space there is no air around you to radiate heat or damper the sun’s direct energy, you would burn on one side that is lit by the sun’s light and freeze on the other side that is in the shadow. Speaking of shadows in space, because there is no air to bounce light rays around in space, astronauts have described putting their hand in a shadow (behind the spaceship) and it going completely black like staring into a void.
If you account for the history of the universe, after the big bang the universe was very hot, like a plasma. As it cooled and the universe formed there was a Goldilocks period for a few hundred millions years where space was at a habitable temperature. Other than having no air to breathe you could have floated in space and felt completely comfortable.
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