How/why is space between the sun and the earth so cold, when we can feel heat coming from the sun?
In: 11387
Space isn’t cold.
Space isn’t hot, either.
Space is a vacuum, and since temperature is a property of matter, a vacuum doesn’t have a measurable temperature.
Well, it sort of does, since it’s not a perfect vacuum–there’s some matter floating around, but it’s so little that its temperature doesn’t matter.
If you were floating in space between the earth and the sun, you would have to worry about overheating, not freezing. The thing you see in sci fi sometimes where people insta-freeze in space is pure fiction. Even when not in direct sunlight, you’d cool down fairly slowly, since there’s no air to carry the heat away from you.
Space doesn’t have a temperature in any meaningful sense
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