Temperature In Space?

Todays temperature in space was 52 celcuis with some scattered asteroid showers and some solar flares.

For the rest of the week expect temperatures to dip down to 32 celcuis at night (wait, when is it night)

peace

dalen

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
OK, here's a question: How does air-conditioning work in space?

For space vehicles, one of the most challenging aspects of design is figuring out how to keep the side exposed to the sun cool enough so that the electronics don't over-heat while at the same time keeping the side facing away from the sun warm enougn so that the electronics don't stop working.

Unmanned probes for example use plutonium pellets to keep the inside at a nice toasty temperature while using sophisticated heat-sink designs to _radiate_ enough heat into space to keep cool. The heatsinks are not unlike the heatsinks in your computer right now they just lack a fan (which would be useless without an atmosphere) and rely on very advanced fin designs to optimize the emission of radiant energy.

In space flight, they also keep the vehicles spinning for gyroscopic stabilization as well as to evenly distribute the radiant heat recieved from the sun across the hull.

If it goes slowly, then why would an astronaut freeze up quickly when exposed to a vacuum?

You will most likely freeze (at least get very cold) if you were exposed to the vacuum because of the effects of evaporative cooling. The moisture on your skin and in your mouth will instantly start to boil away in a vacuum and take a lot of your body heat with it.

An astronaut in a suit won't cool off at all and in fact has a body suit with water being circulated to cool them down while they are in space because otherwise he would overheat since they radiate very little energy from inside that suit to space.

Jon

If your out in the dark side of were the Earth is, you will freeez and and body will turn to chunks of ice when you do not have those siuts on....And the daylight side of the Earth, you will VAPORIZE or FRY because your blood will boil...

Originally posted by as400
If your out in the dark side of were the Earth is, you will freeez and and body will turn to chunks of ice when you do not have those siuts on....And the daylight side of the Earth, you will VAPORIZE or FRY because your blood will boil...

Actually, your blood will boil no matter where you are. Since there is a huge pressure difference the gases in your blood will come out of solution. In reality, they don't even come out of solution that quickly because your arteries and muscles provide a lot of pressure themselves. Meaning a good way to survive a leak in your spaceship long enough to fix it would be to keep your muscles as tense as possible.

If you were in space in shadow of the sun without a suit you may feel cold (from evaporative cooling) but you won't quickly freeze into a chunk of ice because a vacuum has very little ability to remove heat (it all has to be radiated away.) Instead you will be dead from either oxygen deprivation or severe internal hemmoraging a long time before your body radiated all of its heat away.

Without a suit the biggest problem (after that no breathing thing) in daylight would be from the massive amount of ultraviolet radiation. You will suffer the most severe sun burning imaginable in only a few seconds.

Jon

[edit on 8.1.2006 by Voxel]

Thanks Voxel. Cleared that up for me

*

Don't forget the ambient (think that's the right word) of space.

Cosmic radiation etc.

The only way you could survive ina vaccum, is if you were artificially adapted to do so, or somehow evolved to, though for that, you'd have to have come from a species that evolved in hihgly rare circumstances.

I think i've changed my mind about going into space now Space is dangerous!

The base temperature in space is about 3K. This is in total darkness without the sun shining on you. Sorrry if the post is a little funny, I've had a couple tonight . At any rate, that's due to the background microwave radiation that permeates everything. You cannot both lower something to absolute zero and measure because you are adding energy that will take it above absolute zero. Now, normal orbital temp for something like the shuttle is like 280K or just above freezing. Now, there may be a little atmo drag acting on the shuttle, but it probably won't heat that much maybe a couple degrees. Space radiators work by radiating the heat out into space, they can't be that effecient methinks. All that cold and you can't use any of it, tsk tsk.

Originally posted by lildevil585

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
It's a question i can't find an answer to. As there is no air in space to be tempered what would the outside temperature be just out of earths atmosphere or on the moon. Would it be below freezing or would it be mega hot because there is no protection from the sun. Either way im guessing it cant be too extreme?

While your correct in saying that there is no air in space to be tempered with, if your close enough to the sun, then your fried. However , as you get farther and farther away from the sun, its power becomes limited, and you can eventually survive as long as you can hold your breath.

The temperature would be dependant on how much atmosphere you are in at the time. At the Thermopause at the edge of the atmosphere where the suns radiation meets high flying oxygen and nitrogen molecules, the temperature can jump suddenly from one kelvin to almost 1000. This is because the sun's ultraviolet rays ionize the oxygen and the oxygen reverts back to its normal diatomic state releasing energy to the molecules around it. I really don't know if it happens to metals or other trace gases that are in the atmosphere, but I think it would.

As for there being air in space, I'm sure there is "air" in space. It is just down to about 1 atom/cu.M. (Intergalactic mean density) But, 99% of it is ionized hydrogen. And it probably has the atmospheric pressure of .000001 pascals. Your body is pushing out at 1 MPa because of our adaptations to earths atmosphere, which bears down at you around 1 MPa. (Slight changes occur when climate causes rain, but are not very significant to you at all, unlike a fighter pilot without a suit or an astronaut flying in excess of altitudes of 35,000 ft. ) As you leave any great body of mass, the pressure of the molecules drops around you, but your body will still push out at that 1 MPa, so as for holding your breath. That is very unlikely as to how long you would survive. It would be more as how long your body would last before it ruptured and leaked all your vital body tissues and fluids into space.

Anyway, thats just my 2 cents.

How can it be that cold on the moon in darkness,if the moon is closer to the sun?
+ any space around the earth should allways be warm or hot,the sun is a constant
furnace sending its heat in all directions.Space near a star cannot be COLD.

[edit on 11-9-2006 by NLDelta9]

Originally posted by NLDelta9


How can it be that cold on the moon in darkness,if the moon is closer to the sun?
+ any space around the earth should allways be warm or hot,the sun is a constant
furnace sending its heat in all directions.Space near a star cannot be COLD.

[edit on 11-9-2006 by NLDelta9]

When sunlight shines on the Earth, our atmosphere keeps some of the heat from escaping from into space so it doesn't completely freeze when we experience night. On the other hand, the Moon has pretty much no atmosphere so any heat from sunlight is immediately lost when it becomes dark.

Originally posted by NLDelta9
Space near a star cannot be COLD.

Yes it kind of can. Temperature is an emergent collective property of many atoms. Assuming that space is a vacuum it means it doesnt have any temperature.

Therefore the actual space around the sun is not hot as you described it.

Originally posted by Voxel

Originally posted by as400
If your out in the dark side of were the Earth is, you will freeez and and body will turn to chunks of ice when you do not have those siuts on....And the daylight side of the Earth, you will VAPORIZE or FRY because your blood will boil...

Actually, your blood will boil no matter where you are. Since there is a huge pressure difference the gases in your blood will come out of solution. In reality, they don't even come out of solution that quickly because your arteries and muscles provide a lot of pressure themselves. Meaning a good way to survive a leak in your spaceship long enough to fix it would be to keep your muscles as tense as possible.

If you were in space in shadow of the sun without a suit you may feel cold (from evaporative cooling) but you won't quickly freeze into a chunk of ice because a vacuum has very little ability to remove heat (it all has to be radiated away.) Instead you will be dead from either oxygen deprivation or severe internal hemmoraging a long time before your body radiated all of its heat away.

Without a suit the biggest problem (after that no breathing thing) in daylight would be from the massive amount of ultraviolet radiation. You will suffer the most severe sun burning imaginable in only a few seconds.

Jon

Yep, Voxel is spot on. Even if you had some type of sheild that would protect you from the radiation from the Sun, and an oxygen mask, without a space suit you would die because of the pressure difference. The blood, and other liquids inside your body would want to get out to level the pressure difference. Sorry to put this so grotesquely, but you would bleed from every 'hole' (sorry, forgotten the scientific term) in your body (like ears, nostrils, mouth, etc), and im sure you can guess what other substances would leak out of you. This would all happen in a matter of seconds until the pressure on either side of your skin (i.e. inside your body, and outside) was level.

As for heat in space, i shall describe it in simple terms:

• Heat is caused by the vibrations of the particles that make up an object. Without any objects there is no heat (as in a vacuum).
  
  
• Heat transfers from a warm object to a cold object until they are both the same temperature, when they will be in equilibrium.
  
  
• Because of this, absolute zero (Zero Kelvin) can never be reached, because to cool matter, colder matter is needed to absorb the heat of the matter to cool it.
  

I think it's about sun rays also, no matter if it's in space or on some planet, pluto is very far from the sun, would it be colder in space near pluto? and warmer in space in the area where earth is?
The question is how cold is betwen galaxies where the sun does not reach.

Originally posted by pepsi78
I think it's about sun rays also, no matter if it's in space or on some planet, pluto is very far from the sun, would it be colder in space near pluto? and warmer in space in the area where earth is?
The question is how cold is betwen galaxies where the sun does not reach.

NO.

As I said earlier and as many people have said in this thread, space as it is a vacuum does not have any temperature and therefore cant be hot or cold.

Originally posted by gfad

Originally posted by pepsi78
I think it's about sun rays also, no matter if it's in space or on some planet, pluto is very far from the sun, would it be colder in space near pluto? and warmer in space in the area where earth is?
The question is how cold is betwen galaxies where the sun does not reach.

NO.

As I said earlier and as many people have said in this thread, space as it is a vacuum does not have any temperature and therefore cant be hot or cold.

It's not really empty, cosmic rays and other particles have a density in space, go in a room where there is vacum , take a heater and see if it worms up, to say there is no temperature at all I think it's a bit over the top.
Does the sun rays interact with matter in space? does it interact with particles in space?

Originally posted by pepsi78
It's not really empty, cosmic rays and other particles have a density in space, go in a room where there is vacum , take a heater and see if it worms up, to say there is no temperature at all I think it's a bit over the top.
Does the sun rays interact with matter in space? does it interact with particles in space?

Its empty enough to assume that its a vacuum. There is basically no temperature in between space objects such as comets or planets.

And again you cant heat up a vacuum as there is nothing to heat up.

Originally posted by pepsi78
It's not really empty, cosmic rays and other particles have a density in space, go in a room where there is vacum , take a heater and see if it worms up, to say there is no temperature at all I think it's a bit over the top.
Does the sun rays interact with matter in space? does it interact with particles in space?

Yes, the sun interacts with all sorts of stuff in space. Solar pressure (it's pretty easy, the sun pushes on things, the exact mechanics escapes me at the moment) pushes things around the solar system. It's a pretty normal orbital perturbation you have to take into account when doing satellites orbits. AKA, more work determining stationkeeping.

The relevant question isn't, "Is there temperature in space?" rather it is, "If something were in space, what would its temperature be?" The latter can be answered very easily just based on asking a couple questions. Is the thing making its own temperature? What is its position in space? Is it in shadow, shielded from the sun? Basically, if you shield it from light from the sun and other stars, the temperature of an object with drop to about 3 Kelvin. This is because it is still being heated a little by background radio waves that permeate everywhere in the galaxy.

what about the fact that comets are made up of water which is cold enough to be ice ? so it must be rather cold.

Space has no heat, but of course, objects in space, have heat. Comets do not create their own heat, but none-the-less, they are made of matter, thus they have heat, but not very much, so they are turned to ice.

Planets are like really cold stars that have formed a crust on the outside. Stars are made of loads of matter, as are planets made of matter (albeit, alot less than stars, thus they do nnot have a fiery surface, and cool down enough to form a crust). So planets are warmed up by themselves, and by radiation from the sun. Im sure comets would melt though if they get too close to the sun.