Where does the heat from the Earth ultimately go?

Question

In order for the Earth to maintain something resembling a stable temperature over time, a certain amount of heat must escape the planet every day. Where does it go? How can heat travel through outer space, when space is very nearly a perfect vacuum and therefore has almost no matter for heat to travel through? It seems to me that even if heat can travel through outer space, it must be very very inefficient at pulling the heat out of the atmosphere, since it is so low in density.

Answer 1

The same way that heat from the sun gets here in the first place.

Heat travels through the vacuum of space as infrared light. Light is an electromagentic wave that caries itself.

Heat from the warm Earth radiaes back into space as infrared light.