Our sun gives us energy. What happens to that energy after we’re done using it? Does it stay here on earth? If it does, won’t it accumulate over time and harm our planet?
In: Earth Science
Earth is warm, which means it emits energy. That energy is mostly in the form of infrared light, which is radiated away into space during the night. At a fundamental level, it’s cold at night because the cold of space works its way down to the Earth when the sun isn’t there to keep it warm. To put it in very ELI5 terms: if your eyes saw different colors, the Earth would glow with its warmth in the same way that a hot piece of metal glows in the colors your eyes can see, and this glow carries away energy.
(Actually, the Earth emits more energy than it gets from the sun – about three parts in ten thousand of this energy come from the Earth’s internal heat, as it continues to cool down from its formation billions of years ago + release energy from all the radioactive materials beneath the surface. This flow was larger in the past, and was once just under 1% of the Earth’s surface energy budget. But the energy from the sun is and always has been the dominant factor.)
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