this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
514 points (97.9% liked)

Science Memes

19058 readers
281 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/44126927

Goldilocks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tensorpudding@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is not completely correct though. It is our atmosphere/albedo/geological and natural processes that help maintain consistently livable temperatures, not just living in the habitable zone. No atmosphere? We'd be like the Moon, where it is too hot in sunlight and too cold in shade despite being similarly far from the sun as Earth.

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also its not true that space is "very very cold".

If you are in space wearing space suite that doesn't radiate heat properly, you could die from the excessive heat. Once dead your body stops producing heat and the existing heat eventually radiate away and your body freeze.

Space is neither hot or cold because these are property of matter. Since space has very little atoms, it technically has no temperature.

[–] Techlos@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Can't ignore bosons; photon wavelength is a measure of temperature too.

Space has a temperature, which is based on the average of incoming radiation through that space; i.e. the thermal equilibrium to emit as much energy as is absorbed by a theoretical perfectly thermally conductive black body at that point in space.

Based off CMB radiation, space on average is a little over 2.7 kelvin. It'll be hotter near stars, but the void dwarfs matter on a cosmic scale

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

TIL.

I guess it depends on definition of the word "temperature".

I was referring to the classical definition

In classical thermodynamics and kinetic theory, temperature reflects the average kinetic energy of the particles in a system, providing a quantitative measure of how energy is distributed among microscopic degrees of freedom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature