if i am correct. it is the sun that is giving us heat, at a decent rate. and if you are in space and the suns rays hit you, you are frazzled.

then how come there are huge Ice balls floating about willy nilly?? how come they haven't been frazzled and melted??

please help

Originally posted by Fletch
if i am correct. it is the sun that is giving us heat, at a decent rate. and if you are in space and the suns rays hit you, you are frazzled.

then how come there are huge Ice balls floating about willy nilly?? how come they haven't been frazzled and melted??

please help

even i know that our entire galaxy isn't warm, just as many of the planets aren't. the sun doesn't heat everywhere, otherwise why do we have ice caps on our own planet and we're relatively close to the sun compared with some of the outer planets.

heat from the sun follows the inverse cube law with regards to intensity.
If you double the distance from the sun the energy received is 8 times less.
So something twice as far away as the earth will be well below 0 celcius.

The oceans would probably be all ice if our planet didn't have atmosphere which traps the sun's heat inside similar to double glazing. Space is basically a vacum, which means there is nothing there to retain heat, so the only heat comes from the sun's radiation. As has already been said, the further away from the sun you get the less intence the sun's radiation is, therefore the colder it becomes. If you were to step outside the Earth's atmosphere you would freeze to death (that's if your blood vessels didn't all explode first and you had an oxygen tank to stop you suffocating) rather than being 'frazzled' by the sun's rays. That's why Pluto and that other new 'planet' they've discovered (who's name escapes me) are not really planets at all, they're pretty much just lumps of ice floating in space.

Also, if you think about it, stars are also 'suns', but we don't feel any heat coming from them during the night.

Uselss facts I was told earlier this week:

Outer space has a temperature of about 1 Kelvin

Pluto has a temperature of 2 Kelvin


How do they know? Who has been there to find out?

loads of temperature stuff revealed here : http://www.nmm.ac.uk/site/request/setTemplate:singlecontent/contentTypeA/conWebDoc/contentId/272/navId/00500300f00k

and a temperature calculator here : http://physics.ccri.edu/keefe/temperature.htm

It's our atmosphere that keeps us warm and magnifies the Sun's heat, like a greenhouse.

Ever noticed that when you're 8 miles up in a plane, right on the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, the outside temp is always something like minus 50c?

Originally posted by Fletch
Ice in Space. How??

Just like Pigs In Space I guess !!! :P

The temperature in space is absolute zero : minus 235 degrees celsius and we are alive only because, at a distance of 93 million miles from the Sun we benefit from the Solar wind, giving us light and heat,also, our atmosphere retains the heat, keeping us safe and warm.

Originally posted by halevan
The temperature in space is absolute zero : minus 235 degrees celsius and we are alive only because, at a distance of 93 million miles from the Sun we benefit from the Solar wind, giving us light and heat,also, our atmosphere retains the heat, keeping us safe and warm.

Sorry but that's bullsh*t - it depends on where you are in Space - there are billions of stars all giving off heat just like the Sun (the Sun is pretty small compared to other stars too). One point in Space could be minus 100 degrees C while another could be 10,000 degrees C etc. As someone already stated the gases around a body (like our atmosphere) influence it's temperature greatly too.

Originally posted by MrHelicopter
Uselss facts I was told earlier this week:

Outer space has a temperature of about 1 Kelvin

Pluto has a temperature of 2 Kelvin


How do they know? Who has been there to find out?
I guess that's thoretical. However, I would have thought that the actual temperature of space would be 0 Kelvin since there's no particals there to conduct anything, and no convection. Presumably the only heat would be from radiation from stars, but if it was at a point a significant distance away from any stars I don't understand where the heat would come from.

However, 0 Kelvin is theoretically impossible to achieve, so maybe it never gets lower than 1K naturally. I'm no expert.

Sounds like a job for the only person who could ever possibly find out the facts through scientific and theoretical experimentation.

Go for it Super Man..........I mean Sam Miguel:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Having gotten tired of waiting for SM to come up with a theory I've decided to give it a go.

Space is a vacuum. As heat needs particles to travel, (gas, liquid or solid), it CAN'T be the sun's heat we feel.

Light however CAN travel through a vacuum so it must be this that we feel as HEAT.

Our atmosphere filters this light into wavelengths, and allows only the ULTRAVIOLET rays to get through (hence the sky appears to be blue(ish) from anywhere within the Earth's atmosphere).

This ultraviolet radiation is what burns our skin and causes cancer, and also gives plants their energy.

A sunbed light source is cool to the touch, but can burn you!!!

This radiation is then absorbed by earth's surface and later released as INFRARED radiation back into the atmosphere as heat and provides us with those warm nights.

And now I'm losing the plot so I'll shut up!!!!!

:loopy:

Originally posted by fnkysknky
Sorry but that's bullsh*t - it depends on where you are in Space - there are billions of stars all giving off heat just like the Sun (the Sun is pretty small compared to other stars too). One point in Space could be minus 100 degrees C while another could be 10,000 degrees C etc. As someone already stated the gases around a body (like our atmosphere) influence it's temperature greatly too.

Yours is B******T D**K head

halevan you obviously know f*** all about physics and the Universe so be quiet. You said Space is absolute zero - I'm telling you that's absolute ********. Actually if you want to be correct about it Space itself being a vacuum doesn't have a temperature but if you put something in it then that will achieve one - depending on where it is this will vary massively as I stated before but it will never be below 2.73 Kelvin in theory.

Originally posted by Cyclone
heat from the sun follows the inverse cube law with regards to intensity.
If you double the distance from the sun the energy received is 8 times less.
So something twice as far away as the earth will be well below 0 celcius.

This is perfectly true. I used to be a radiographer and the law applies to radiation intensity.

I thought it was called the inverse square law?

Originally posted by fnkysknky
halevan you obviously know f*** all about physics and the Universe so be quiet. You said Space is absolute zero - I'm telling you that's absolute ********. Actually if you want to be correct about it Space itself being a vacuum doesn't have a temperature but if you put something in it then that will achieve one - depending on where it is this will vary massively as I stated before but it will never be below 2.73 Kelvin in theory.


Neither do you mate and thats a fact!!!

But it must be possible to go below absolute zero yeah !?

I mean ... if you get something quite cool like ... almost to absolute zero ... then pop it in a freezer !?

That should drop it a few degrees below absolute zero !?

Originally posted by Jamie
But it must be possible to go below absolute zero yeah !?

I mean ... if you get something quite cool like ... almost to absolute zero ... then pop it in a freezer !?

That should drop it a few degrees below absolute zero !?


Your normal freezer is 273 degrees Kelvin ABOVE absolute zero.

Once something drops to absolute zero it has no more heat to lose so cannot get any colder.

Originally posted by markham
Once something drops to absolute zero it has no more heat to lose so cannot get any colder.

sounds a bit like Newcastle in January.

Originally posted by markham
Your normal freezer is 273 degrees Kelvin ABOVE absolute zero.

Once something drops to absolute zero it has no more heat to lose so cannot get any colder.

I think Jamie may have been having a laugh with his freezer suggestion. Absolute Zero is based on the vibration of molecules, rather than heat loss. Here's a simple explanation I found on the net:

The temperature of an object depends on how fast the atoms and molecules which make up the object can shake, or oscillate.

As an object is cooled, the oscillations of its atoms and molecules slow down. For example, as water cools, the slowing oscillations of the molecules allow the water to freeze into ice.

In all materials, a point is eventually reached at which all oscillations are the slowest they can possibly be. The temperature which corresponds to this point is called absolute zero.

Note that the oscillations never come to a complete stop, even at absolute zero.

But wot if you stop some molecules ... and then freeze them too !?

That will have to make em colder than just regular 'un-fozen' still molecules yeah !?