why is it cold between the earth and the sun?

Question

If the Sun's rays are what heat our planet.. then why is it cold between the sun and the earth? the sun rays travel though this space. then why is it not heated as well???

Answer 1

Who told you is is cold between Earth and the Sun? It is not. Empty space has no heat or cold, so how warm a space craft in that space would be depends on how much sunlight hits it. And it is a lot of sunlight. And since the space craft cannot open a window to cool off, it will warm up like a parked car in a sunny place on Earth.

Now you may be thinking how Apollo 13 got cold when the power was shut off. That is because the Apollo space craft was colored shiny sliver, to reflect as much sunlight as possible to keep it cool. With no way to open a window to cool off, the engineers carefully designed it to naturally be at a nice temperature when in full Sun in space with all the power on. When the power was shut off, that balance was lost. They could have reestablished the balance by painting the outside of the space craft black to make to soak up more heat from the Sun. But there was no way to do that during the mission.

Answer 2

Actually, you've answered your question yourself. The suns rays travel *through* that space - they don't land on anything to transfer their energy to. If a space craft were in this space, it would definitely feel those rays - in fact, on the moon, and in orbit, the astronauts need thick suits to protect them from the intense heat the sun delivers - and when there's no heat (in shadow) they need the suits to protect them from the extreme cold - as the heat in their bodies would just radiate out to space.

Answer 3

Most of the posters here are giving the intuitively correct but physically incorrect answer.

While a classical vacuum (i.e. a truly empty space) all by itself would not have a temperature, the "physical" vacuum which is always filled with some radiation field, does. And since there is no way to create a classical vacuum without fields (it follows from the third law of thermodynamics and quantum theory that one can't), it is much better to avoid the idea of a temperature-less vacuum.

Since there is intense solar radiation between the sun and earth, the thermodynamic temperature of the vacuum would be correctly given by the temperature of a black body in thermodynamic equilibrium with that radiation.

It happens to be somewhere around the freezing point of water for a black body in Earth's orbit.

Thanks to the fact that the radiation from the sun is not black body radiation in equilibrium with the energy density, we have, in addition, a very nicely tempered planet which can support life feeding on the enormous entropy that can be extracted from the radiation field.

Answer 4

Because there is nothing material in space, it's just emptiness. Any object in space feels the sun's heat on its sunward side, but the other side is cold because there is no material to carry the heat.

Answer 5

Heat is basically particle vibration. And space is essentially a vacuum, having few to no particles in it. Thus, light can travel through it without hitting particles and giving them energy, causing them to move around and therefore produce heat. But when that light hits the atmosphere, it finds a lot more particles to vibrate.

Answer 6

because matter needs to retain that heat energy. there is only a very small amount of matter in space, and it really has no effect on the temperature at all. the one thing that really has an effect on the temperature in space is radiation. there is still electromagnetic radiation left over from the big bang. that radiation heats up space to about 2.7K (-270.3 C)

Answer 7

a million that is chilly contained in the northern hemisphere contained in the month of january because the northern hemisphere of the earth is tilted far flung from the solar in January 2 Polar areas are chillier because they are on the right and bottom of the international, little or no image voltaic reaches those aspects, while tropical aspects receive an excellent style of image voltaic in the course of the 365 days, and are close to the equator, so those aspects are very warmth and humid 3 Mountain climbers ought to placed on shades and use solar block because the picture voltaic that reflects off the snow it really is on a mountain can nonetheless reason damage to the eyes and epidermis 4 regardless if water become on earth or no longer, definite, earth might want to nonetheless have climate.. because it would want to nonetheless have wind 5 water takes an prolonged time to soak up warmth than land does... the particular warmth ability of water (the quantity of skill it takes to toughen the temperature of a substance by technique of one million degree celsius) is 4.19 joules of skill in conserving with gram while, searching on the variety of land, which comprise sand might want to be as low as 0.sixty six joules of skill in conserving with gram (truly of a technological expertise lesson for you)

Answer 8

To heat something you need a medium that will absorb the heat. Since space is a vacuum, there's nothing there to absorb the solar radiation. This is like asking why doesn't the pan get hot over the stove when its on, and then not having a pan there.

The energy to heat exists, it simply has nothing to interact with.

Answer 9

Yeah, the poster above me is right - you can't heat something that isn't there. But if you did put something there... i.e. the planet Mercury... then that's why it's so hot there. Same reason why the bright side of the moon and dark side of the moon have such a huge temperature difference.

Answer 10

in order to have heat retention you must have a body or mass such as a planet or moon or even an asteroid. a space void of these bodies can retain no heat.