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If that blows your mind then think about this: As the universe expanded after the Big Bang, it cooled from unimaginably high temperatures. In principle, this suggest that there could have been a very short window much later, tens of millions of years after the Big Bang, when the background temperature of the entire universe was capable of sustaining life everywhere. Some physicists have suggested this might have created a brief, universe-wide “habitable epoch,” though this remains theoretical.
I’m not an expert, so this is probably not a muture understanding, but it’s cool to imagine a universe where life was incredibly abundant.
Edit: I got this idea from a video, and I found it! Please transfer all criticism of my comment to this video.
but it’s cool to imagine a universe where life was incredibly abundant
There was probably nothing but helium, hydrogen and a tiny bit of lithium at that period.
Those are some of the best elements though.
They surely are popular…
Top 3 probably
Yeah, season 8 of helium is just chef’s kiss.
I myself am a caesium guy. Hydrogen is okay but overused
Interesting theory, I’d never heard of it before. All of the sudden, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”, actually seems plausible (although this theory looks like it came well after SW in 2014).
The actual paper about it: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf
More weird to me is that, at some point before the first stars, the entire universe glowed through the entire rainbow, so there is a moment when, were you to travel back in time, the entire universe would glow blindingly green.
It probably would never appear green, due to the black-body radiation distribution. When the peak is at green, it just looks like white to us. Our sun is kinda a “green” star due to this
But it would go from blue to white to red. Similar colour progression that we can find in the distribution of stars
Indeed! Good point! For some reason, I was under the impression that the CMB was monochromatic (corresponding to a red shifted equivalent of the precise energy of W and Z boson annihilation to produce photons). Thanks!!
I’m skeptical of this. Life doesn’t just need a certain temperature, it needs to convert lower entropy energy to higher entropy. A uniform environment temperature does not provide any usable energy. You would still need a star or some other energy source.
It also needs something that can form complex molecules. The lightest element we know of that can form these is carbon. That didn’t appear in reasonable quantities until the first stars exploded.
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Well, “life as we know it”. But for all we know energy rather than matter-based beings could have existed more readily back then, and perhaps struggle to exist now under lower density conditions. Thereby making that earlier era more habitable for their type of life, even as our current era is more habitable for our own type.
Goldilocks space is like “my breath immediately turns solid in the shade and my body is turning to charcoal in the direct sunlight”
You need a giant buffer of atmosphere to help average the temperature a bit. Maybe some kind of large rock with a dense atmosphere?
That or a giant space turtle with elephants holding a flatten rock on it’s back.
A strong thaumic field slows down the sunlight too. Doesn’t change the heat but it’s nice to see sunrise pour across the landscape like honey
But what’s holding up the elephants?
More elephants, obviously
WRONG! It is turtles actually. It’s elephants alternating with turtles (and then every tenth level is capybaras) all the way down.
You’re forgetting manatees.
They took a mental health / exercise break before they get back in there…
Real MVPs
I stand corrected.
If you go that way you gotta have at least 8 colors.
that’s not quite right. see that turtle has its own sun and moon chasing it around. and they did the math the sun and moon are superluminal bodies
The other option is a “barbeque roll” a favourite of sci-fi starships, from authors who have done some homework.
You’re basically trying to balance half way up a waterfall.
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.
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.
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
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.
The dark side of your body in space is freezing cold while the light side gets hot. You really need to rotate to get that even crispy layer.
I know its memes, but the astronaut tim peake discussed the space suits on No Such Thing As A Fish where he said that the whole get-up is like 16+ layers thick, and the only heating inside is for your fingertips, so you dont lose fine motor function. He said you can be sitting working on a panel outside the station, with one hand facing the sun and one hand facing the shade, and the delta-T of your two hands could be something like 500°C.
Maaaaadness! (It’s been a while since I listened to this episode, my memory of numbers could be skewed.)
What is a “delta-T?”
Difference in temperature.
Yeah, sorry. Its difference in temperature. I got delta-T in my head and blinkered in on either making a ‘triangle’ to denote delta or just write it out, instead of just saying temperature difference.
Apologies.
Not anymore, there’s a blanket
Space isn’t cold. It isn’t hot either.
PV=nRT.
When you treat n as the independent variable…
I forget sometimes that while space isvery cold, it’s also an incredible insulator.
In terms of convection sure, but radiation against -270C will freeze you quickly enough.
And in direct sunlight at Earth distance you’ll cook. Space isn’t cold. It isn’t anything. You are describing your temperature.
Im describing heat flux in space, which the vast majority of is far from any heat source. Get out of here with your heliocentrism, eeewwww!
The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, A giant nuclear furnace.
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees 🎵
a massive plasma cannon.
balmy is an understatement
Only with protective layers though.
It’s funny how something can be technically correct and still feel counterintuitive. Space really is extreme in every direction.
71763 notes
what this mean?
It’s analogous to a combined count of how many people have commented on the post, or shared it (or “reblogged”, to use the Tumblr term). It might also include likes? I only use Tumblr occasionally so I’m not sure.
I don’t know why Tumblr counts things like this. I sort of like it though — it makes it feel like a distinct place. Tumblr hasn’t escaped enshittification, but it makes me happy that it still exists as a little pocket of weirdos
Thanks.
It seemed implausible that it’d have had that many “community notes”.
