this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] Anticorp 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Does heat travel at the speed of light? I just realized I have no idea how the heat from the sun travels to earth.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago

The "heat" IS the radiation. So, yes.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Someone correct me if I'm missing some nuance here, but heat doesn't get transferred directly through space because heat is vibrating molecules and space is a vacuum. The sun radiates (speed O' light). A lot of that radiation just reflects off the earth (or we wouldn't be able to see it), but a lot of it gets absorbed. THAT's when it's converted into heat energy. It's also why the greenhouse effect is a global phenomena: light energy comes in across the vacuum relatively easily, turns to heat on Earth instead of being reflected, heat energy cannot escape as easily as light energy.

[–] Anticorp 4 points 3 months ago

Neat! Thanks for sharing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Infrared light is absorbed quite easily, producing heat, and the sun emits a lot of it. Of course, all photons that are absorbed and not reflected will produce thermal energy, and infrared radiation is commonly referred to as radiant heat. The other two heat transfer methods are conduction and convection, which requires a medium to transfer through.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When there is a total solar eclipse, the temperature does drop dramatically. But it might not be detectable on the other side right away for sure.

[–] 200ok 3 points 3 months ago

It does! And if you're in a place where night animals are noisy, they get noisy for the length of "dusk", totality, and "dawn"!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yes, we have conduction, convection, and radiative heat transfer. Vacuum insulates the first two, it's the light from the sun that heats us up