How, at 93 million miles away, does the sun feel so warm, yet when a simple cloud passes over it the warmth is incredibly dampened?
In: Planetary Science
The sun feels warm because it’s an ongoing nuclear fusion reaction that’s thousands of times larger than the earth. 😛 In a cosmic scale the sun is extremely close to us. The radiant heat it produces (in the form of infrared rays) flies through space almost entirely unimpeded, so it warms you up effectively.
A cloud blocks the infrared rays from hitting you. Instead of warming you, the energy goes into heating the cloud or is reflected back into space. EDIT: Just in case anyone doesn’t know, this doesn’t apply to UV light. Even on cloudy days, the sun’s ultraviolet rays go straight through that and are still perfectly capable of giving you a sunburn.
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