Re: DUMB HUMOR (was Re: biological changes to make humans able to adapt to space)

Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Sat, 04 Dec 1999 21:39:51 -0800

> Michael M. Butler butler@comp-lib.org wrote:
> > "What is your temperature?" "Um, 3 degrees K, or three hundred degres F,
> > depending on how you look at it."
> Technotranscendence wrote:
> Wrong conversion! Michael probably means -370 degrees C (or -457 degrees
> F)... Had to nitpick!:)

The way I interpreted that is: in a near vacuum, it doesnt matter much what the temperature is. The heat transfer from or to the few particles present is very low compared to the heat transfer by radiation. If one were in deep space with a pressure of 1 picotorr, the temperature could be anything you wanted, but you wouldnt know the difference. You would still radiate heat away. Doug Jones explained it in his post.

To get a feel for what I am saying, take a grinder and grind some steel. One can put ones bare hand in the shower of sparks and yet feel no discomfort, even tho the sparks are hotter'n hell. Its because there is so little mass there to conduct heat into ones skin. spike