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gab_r95 t1_j4u45u9 wrote

Reply to comment by Competitive_Way_5485 in What happens to the energy of sound in space? by full_hammer

The signals are electromagnetic waves (light, microwave, radio...). They don't need a medium, and actually in a vacuum they go as fast as possible (speed of light). We freeze in space by radiating the energy away (thermal infrared).

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Jai84 t1_j4uhxzz wrote

Also, (I see people going back and forth on this a lot, but here’s my understanding….) you wouldn’t freeze super fast like you see in movies. There might be ice forming on your skin, but in general there’s not really any matter (there’s an infinitesimal amount even in the “vacuum of space”) for your body to interact with, so the only heat your body is loosing is from slow radiation. I’m assuming you’re also gassing off water vapor and other things into the vacuum from your skin, eyes, mouth, lungs, etc. which would cause a loss in temperature locally I think? I haven’t done a lot of research in this, but I think the general understanding is you’d take awhile to actually “freeze up”. You’d be dead and floating around and looking stiff because there’s minimal forces acting on your limbs etc., which could give the impression you’re frozen.

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Jarlentium t1_j4uk8n8 wrote

Yeah decompression is what will kill you not freezing

And spacecraft don't have freezing issues, they have overheating issues because there's no medium to transfer heat out of the ship

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Poopster46 t1_j4usgbv wrote

> I’m assuming you’re also gassing off water vapor and other things into the vacuum from your skin, eyes, mouth, lungs, etc. which would cause a loss in temperature locally I think?

Absolutely. Due to the extremely low pressure in space, any liquid water would immediately evaporate, as the boiling point is inversely related to pressure. This will cause your surface temperature to drop. But as soon as that's over, your core temperature would probably offset that again.

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