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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Space doesn’t really have a “temperature.” Temperature is the amount of energy in a substance’s atoms; faster-vibrating atoms mean higher temperature. Since space has no atoms, it can’t have a temperature.
Hot objects in space don’t make space warmer, because space can’t be hot (or cold)! However, hot objects still cool down in space, because they still give off heat in the form of infrared light. Thus we say it is “cold” because objects in space cool down to a very low resting temperature, which is cold for our purposes.
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