![]() In the 1960s, researchers at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas exposed several dogs to a near-vacuum environment to study how their bodies fared in the vacuum. Now we understand the temperature of space, or the CMBR, to be more precise, but what if you were exposed to space without a spacesuit? Well, that would be an undesirable experience for many reasons. It’s possible to reach colder temperatures than the CMBR temperature in labs on Earth, but out in space, the constant buzz of this omnipresent emission creates a sort of universal average temperature.ĬMB map by WMAP (Photo Credit : NASA) What Happens To Your Body If Exposed To This Space? ![]() The photons from the event that gave birth to time and space still permeate the cosmos today, causing slight radio interference and heating up space thermometers for curious scientists like us. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is a remnant of the most powerful explosion in history: the Big Bang. ![]() Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) Its recorded temperature would continue decreasing until it reached a temperature of 2.73 K (-270.42 C, -454.75 F), the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). Slowly, your thermometer would start radiating its heat away. Even if they do, they’ll be pretty cold, and the vacuum between them, void of any baryonic matter, wouldn’t be detected. There’s gas, dust and ionized particles from the Sun (known as solar wind) flying around, but these particles are so incredibly far apart that very few of them, if any, would bump into the thermometer. Let’s say that we bring out a very precise thermometer into space. To understand why it forbids it would require complex mathematical treatment involving Heisenberg principles, which we will leave for some other article. In fact, the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics forbid any object from reaching an Absolute Zero temperature. This is because at Absolute Zero, classical laws of physics cease to have validity and quantum mechanics become much more prevalent. Many physicists have spent their entire careers trying to cool things down to an Absolute Zero temperature using lasers and magnetic fields, but they weren’t really successful. All the kinetic energy in a molecule, i.e., their vibrations, will stop, so no further heat can flow at an Absolute Zero temperature.Īlso Read: Why Is Space Cold If There Are So Many Stars? Practically speaking, however, it’s impossible for a substance to reach the temperature of Absolute Zero. Theoretically, the coldest possible temperature in the universe is Absolute Zero, which is -273.15 oC (-459.67 oF) or simply 0 Kelvin. How is that possible? Well, most likely people are referring to the intermittent matter in space like asteroids, moons, planets and comets, which could be “cold”. So, in essence, you cannot technically measure the temperature of outer space. A perfect vacuum has no temperature, as there is nothing in a vacuum whose temperature could be measured. And whenever we say outer space, we generally mean vacuum. Now that you’re enlightened about the distinction between the two, let’s try to evaluate the temperature of outer space.īarring asteroids, meteoroids, planets, moons, and other celestial bodies, most of space is a vacuum, wherein there is no matter. Essentially, the temperature is the average heat of a given body. More heat at an atomic level refers to faster vibrations by molecules, thus resulting in high temperatures. ![]() The heat has ability to do work and temperature can only measure the amount of work that is done as a result of heat. It may also be helpful to think of heat as a verb. Temperature is measured in Celsius, Fahrenheit, or Kelvin.Īs we can see, though the two are linked, they aren’t the same. Temperature, on the other hand, is the bulk measure of the hotness of the body on account of vibrations by molecules at an atomic level. To put it another way, heat refers to the total kinetic energy of molecules inside the body. Heat is the energy in motion from a high-temperature entity to a low-temperature entity measured in Joules. Temperature and heat are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same. ![]()
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