Jakarta –
Sun is the source of the solar system with a very high temperature and the earth can feel the heat of the sun. But why is outer space cold, when the Sun is so hot?
Launch page Popular Science, the solar system is unlike the earth in that it has extreme temperatures. The sun, this ball of fiery gas has a temperature of 15 million celsius at its core with a surface temperature of 5,500 celsius.
Meanwhile, space that is quite far from the earth’s atmosphere or known as outer space has a temperature of 270 Celsius.
The reason outer space is cold, even though the sun is very hot
It turns out that there is a reason why outer space is cold even though the Sun is very hot. The answer is heat as radiation moving through the cosmos, i.e. hotter objects migrate to cooler objects with infrared energy waves.
It is this radiation wave that transfers its heat to other molecules through which it passes. That is the process of transferring heat from the Sun to Earth.
However, in this case, radiation only transfers its heat to the molecules or particles it passes through, so that the molecules or particles it does not pass through will remain cold.
An example is the planet Mercury, where night temperatures are 537 degrees lower than the day side exposed to radiation, according to NASA.
Then what about the Earth where the air stays warm even in several seasons and at night? That’s because on Earth, heat spreads by three methods namely: conduction, convection, and radiation.
When the Sun’s radiation spreads and warms the molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they pass that extra energy on to the molecules around them.
The molecules transmit heat to the molecules around them. This process of transferring heat from one to another is called conduction, which is a chain reaction that transfers heat outside the path of the Sun.
Too Few Molecules in Space
Outer space is a vacuum, where gas molecules in space are too few and too far apart to meet each other.
So, it is impossible for the sun to channel its heat with infrared waves and through the conduction process.
It’s the same with convection where heat transfer is through gravity, which as it is known that in outer space there is no gravity. That’s why outer space remains cold.
Regarding the hot temperature of the Sun, Elisabeth Abel, an engineer/scientist from NASA who is working for Parker Solar Probe, has been preparing vehicles and devices (planes) for long-term trips across space.
Elisabeth plans to build a spacecraft in a program to study the Sun.
This design presents a big and interesting challenge considering that in some parts of the spacecraft it is kept cold to avoid short circuits, and other parts in order to function require hot temperatures.
And in April 2021, NASA’s spacecraft managed to approach the sun from its atmosphere at a distance of 6.5 million miles. This aircraft became the closest spacecraft ever to Sun.
Watch Video “NASA Finds Asteroids The Size Of Trucks Approaching Earth“
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