If the Sun is able to keep Earth warm while being millions of miles away, shouldn’t it get warmer and warmer the closer you get to it (like when you go to space)? Like how it would get warmer if you were to approach a burning house for example?
In: Planetary Science
A lot of these answers don’t seem simple, so I’ll try to say it in a simpler way.
Earth has an atmosphere that can hold the heat. Imagine you are in a cold house and you boil a pot of water with the lid on. The house will still feel cold but the inside of the pot will be hot. The fire that heats the pot is like the sun, and the lid keeping the heat in is like the atmosphere.
This also explains how rain works. The steam that rises to the top of the lid is like the clouds, and the water on the lid that drips back down is like the rain.
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