HOW WE MEASURE TEMPERATURE IN SPACE
from Universe
Measuring temperature on Earth is simple. You place a thermometer in the air, in water, or against a face, and it gives you a number. That number comes from direct contact. Heat flows between the object and the thermometer until they reach the same state, and the reading tells you how energetic the patches are. But then's the problem — space does n't work like that. There's no air to carry heat, no easy way to touch distant objects, and no way to place a thermometer next to a star or in the middle of empty space. So the question becomes how do we measure commodity we can not physically reach?
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