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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Heat, or warmth, is the transfer of energy from one medium to the next. It only occurs when objects are in contact with each other. So the best way to describe it is that heat can only propagate through conduction.
Since space is a vacuum, there is nothing to conduct heat with, so you end with thermal energy being “stuck” within an object.
Conversely, the light can travel through space because it travels through photons instead of thermal energy.
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