Comment on The Physics of Data Centers in Space

FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  How do you measure the temperature of particles that aren’t there?

  Also, the hot argument refers to intense solar radiation, which is available only on one side of the satellite. The other side doesn’t receive sunshine, so it will loose heat.

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  • FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That’s the thing, there are particles there, just very few. Temperature is measuring how fast the particles move, and they move pretty fast in space. We feel heat based on how much energy the particles transfer to us, but because there’s so few particles, it would feel cold.

    This is the same reason why getting rid of heat is so hard in space. The best ways of cooling here on earth involve giving those particles the energy we don’t want, but because there’s so few in space, conventional cooling is nearly impossible.

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    • turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Cooling is still possible if you radiate the heat away. Convective cooling won’t work though.

      The temperature of those few particles doesn’t really matter much since there are so few of them. The overall energy density is low. The whole concept of temperature begins to fall apart in an extreme environment like that.

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