this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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You don't think a function of the temperature from the sun to the earth forms a continuous line? You think it's piecewise? It's continuous! Yeah it probably bottoms out to effectively zero pretty quick, but there's some distance from the sun that would be the right temperature. Sure, the other rays from the sun might not make it livable. Sure, it might be so narrow there's no way to effectively keep yourself in orbit there without getting sucked closer and burning up. Sure, it's a dumb thought experiment, but there's no way there isn't some point where it's comfortable.
The thing about temperature is that it's not instant. Radiation from the sun heats stuff up, and that heat is absorbed by whatever the radiation hits according to its reflectivity and shape, and then lost from conduction, convection, and radiation. The characteristics of what's being heated by the sun and the environment it's in are what determine how hot it gets.
Exactly, so there must be some environment between us and the sun that's comfortable.
Empty space is not like our atmosphere. Similar to sound not going through space, empty space is not a medium that can be heated. You can't heat nothing. Heat is excited atoms. You can't excite nothing.
The atmosphere does just "stop" either though. It also forms a gradient. There's not a magic barrier where the atmosphere is and isn't. It just gets gradually thinner and thinner. So in the same way there's a Goldilocks spot in the atmosphere where it's a comfortable temperature without being too cold, there must be another one near the sun.
Besides, heat radiation travels through a vacuum. If it didn't then the Earth wouldn't get heat from the sun at all.
It travels through the vacuum, but it doesn't heat the vacuum, there's nothing there to heat. The "Goldilocks spot in the atmosphere" is on the ground, that's why we live here.
When you're close enough to the sun it heats you enough, because at some point you're so close you'll burn up, and at some point you'll freeze, so there must be a point between them that's comfortable. (And yes that might involve spinning so you don't cook on one side and freeze on the other.)
I'm sorry, but there's so much wrong with what you said that I can't even begin to correct you.