#pinning this because i wished i clarified this when this post was really popualar
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chemicalarospec · 3 months ago
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This is funny, but actually a misinterpretation of what OP meant/what the Goldilocks zone is.
The reason why Earth is a comfortable temperature is because it has an atmosphere and a lot of other matter to trap the heat; when Earth is not at a given location in its orbit, it's super duper cold like the rest of space.
(Another example to help: Because Mercury does not have an atmosphere to retain heat, it heats up to extremely high temperatures during the day but falls down to extremely low temperatures during the night, much lower than are ever on Earth, even though it is much closer to the Sun than Earth. (NASA))
What I think OP was trying to say was that there's a theoretical area very close to the sun where Sun Is Hot and No Atoms To Hold Heat in Space balance out and create a middling temperature. Since I'm here I might as well try to confirm that exists, and with this explanation from NASA (written by Susan Parker and Jessica Darling) I'm pretty sure it does:
In space, the temperature can be thousands of degrees without providing significant heat to a given object or feeling hot. Why? Temperature measures how fast particles are moving, whereas heat measures the total amount of energy that they transfer. Particles may be moving fast (high temperature), but if there are very few of them, they won’t transfer much energy (low heat). Since space is mostly empty, there are very few particles that can transfer energy to the spacecraft. The corona, for example, has an extremely high temperature but very low density. Think of the difference between putting your hand in a hot oven versus putting it in a pot of boiling water (don’t try this at home!) — in the oven, your hand can withstand significantly hotter temperatures for longer than in the water where it has to interact with many more particles.
wahoo science 👍
everyone knows that space is very very cold, and the sun is very very hot. so i assume there's a bit of space kind of near the sun which is just right. balmy space
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