this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
891 points (98.5% liked)
Curated Tumblr
6974 readers
381 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Here are some OCR tools to assist you in transcribing posts:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.) Never said it "heats the vacuum".
But the theory that the space (proper outerspace space) in-between Earth and the sun has an even temperature gradient assumes that it does.
I literally never said it's even, only that if you plot it out it would be continuous instead of piecewise.
That's exactly what I meant by "even". An even gradient is a continuous one that changes at the same rate across the gradient. There is no medium in space in which for the gradient to exist, that's the defining characteristic of "space". There's no way for the heat to dissipate to until it hits something. The atmosphere protects us from the full brunt of the radiation (which still kills people all the time, even the ambient heat can kill if you're dehydrated enough), without it we'd be fried to a crisp right here on the ground. Idk where in space in between us and the sun this magic safe spot could possibly be when it's not even fully safe on Earth.
I mean continuous like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_function but I think you're thinking I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_function which I do not.
There's a spot in space where you'll burn to a crisp because you're too close to the sun. There's a spot in space where you'll freeze. Therefore there must be at least one point in space that's a comfortable temperature.
And yes, I know there isn't anything to hear up in space. The thing being heated would be you. And like I said, it's probably so narrow that you'd have to be spinning so you don't burn up on one side and freeze on the other. But mathematically, if there's a spot where you're too hot and another where you're too cold and the temperature you experience between them is a continuous function then, by definition, there must be at least one point between them there's a comfortable temperature.
Ah, I see what your mean. But couldn't you then argue that you could be at any point in between them, as long as you were spinning fast enough?
No, the "spin" thing was just to preemptively get past people who might say something like the point is so small that one side would freeze and one side would burn to a crisp. Because, you know, as humans we are not dimensionless points, lol, we have volume.
Right, but if spinning is necessary, than surely the rate of rotation is equally important as distance.
If both sides of you you are deadly cold or deadly hot, no amount of rotation is going to make sure it evens out.