In space, are you able to light a fire?

Question

Fire requires oxygen to be ignited. Is there fire, or do objects only get hot?

I also realize that the Sun is not a ball of flames, but a ball of hydrogen and helium creating fusion.

Answer 1

All fire - heck, any chemical reaction - needs a fuel and an oxidizer.   What we normally call "fire", oxygen is supplied freely from our atmosphere.  In space, engines on spacecraft "burn", but we supply the fuel with oxygen (or some other agent) that is on board the craft.

Lighting a match in space will do nothing, however... it would require oxygen to burn, and there would be none to produce the flame.  

Answer 2

The more general question is...

Absent oxygen how can I make something burn ?

And the answer is that you must supply an oxygenate to start and maintain the reaction.

The sun "burning" is not burning in the traditional sense. Usually burning means proceed with the oxygenation reaction.

If you broaden the question to include reactions that are exo-thermatic (ie they give off heat) then clearly the sun's nuclear fusion fits in that category. Many exothermatic chemical reactions can take place in space absent available oxygen.  

Answer 3

THERE IS NO OXYGEN IN SPACE SO YOU CAN'T LIGHT A FIRE

Answer 4

*laughing*

No. Because there's no oxygen!

Answer 5

I agree but there are some substances that have oxygen in there compound so in that case you all need a laser to ignite them.

Also some bombs will ignite in any conditions and create a short fire anywhere even space or water.

What is space anyway, we are part of it.

If you referring to the vacuum of space, that is not even 90% there are many particles moving in space so in the first look it looks empty.

The fire in outer space will be a lot different because you don't have wind and gravity so it would be odd. It would look like fluid.

Answer 6

Correct, fire requires oxygen (at least, paper/wood conventional fire), so in space, which is nearly a vacuum, you would not be able to light a fire.

Objects would only get hot if you applied heat to it via some method.

Right, the sun creates heat and light via an atomic reaction.

Conventional fire is a chemical reaction that requires oxygen to be present. If you provided the oxygen--such as in conventional space rockets--then a fire can be created in space because you provide all the necessary ingredients.

Answer 7

  The match would light but the paper would not burn,only char.

Answer 8

You can't light a match in space because there is no oxygen. The sun does have oxygen as one of its elements though. But your right, the sun isn't on fire, it is a ball of exploding gas. More specifically, a big ball of nuclear fusion.

Temperature is really the measurement of how fast particles are moving in a given substance. As you know, space is almost a perfect vacuum. The gas it does have isn't dense enough to create very much heat. That's why the temperature in space approaches absolute 0 (-273˚C , 0˚K) but it doesn't quite get there.

Heat travels from the sun to the Earth in a form of energy. Energy can still make it, but heat can't because there are few particles in space.