this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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This always makes me wonder: When they say space is a frozen vacuum, it wouldn't actually feel nearly as cold as it is, right? Because there's no matter to actually take that heat away from you.
The big issue is the pressure, and you'd balloon up like a blob fish out of its depth. But would it feel cold for the few instants you'd have?
no one says space is a βfrozenβ vacuum except movies.
Sorry, that embellishment (?) was probably mine; I guess I meant to say "really cold". And it is really cold, but it's also a very good insulator.
Actually, thinking about it, it really is freezing, isn't it? If you took some liquid water and just let it out into space, wouldn't it eventually freeze? It'd just take a really long time.
Matter not sunlit in space really is cold (and sunlit matter is baking hot, btw). It's just there is so little matter in space (vacuum and all) that getting rid of heat via conduction is virtually impossible, meaning it's insulated. So technically space is cold, also hot, and also damn well insulated.
Water not exposed to sunlight could get as low as - 260C (close to absolute zero) by radiating away all it's heat... eventually. Meanwhile water exposed to our sun in Earth orbit would be at around boiling temps, like 100-140C. Just check the Moon surface temperature readings.