Why doesnt the world heat up?

Question

How come the world does not increasingly heat up due to the suns radiation? When the sun shines on the earth, the earth absorbs that radiation and converts it into heat. But that heat cannot be lost to space since space is a vacuum! So wouldnt that heat be trapped on earth? and if so why doesnt the earth keep getting hotter?

Answer 1

the radiaton can travel through vaccume because they electromagnetic waves. but due to presence of methane,CO2, Water vapour,these radiations are reflected back. these gases absorb heat

Answer 2

The world IS heating up; it's called global warming.

Answer 3

the earth looses energy (heat) by radiation.

when you stand near a campfire, you feel the heat.

what you feel is infrared radiation.

the earth looses heat the same way.

it emits infrared radiation.

maybe you've noticed on cloudy nights, it does not cool off as much as it does on clear nights.

because some of that infrared radiation is trapped and kept.

the "average temperature" is the balance between radiation received from the sun, and energy radiation radiated away from the earth.

(there is heat from the interior of the earth as well, but compared to the sun, that's fairly minor.  consider that the water in the deepest part of the ocean is just barely above freezing in most places.  there's just not much heat escaping, even when we take the underwater volcanoes into account.)

it's often not talked about, but the earth radiates energy away during the daytime as well.

in fact, more energy is lost during the day, because the surface is hotter and emits more radiation.

it's just that the energy from the sun is stronger, so it's not as noticeable.

Answer 4

There are various ways that the Earth loses heat to Space here are the main two:

1. Conduction/Convection: Space is colder than the Earth and heat flows from hot to cold  - there is a very small amount of matter in space which absorbs this energy and also the atoms that escape from the atmosphere into space take energy with them, cooling the earth.

2. Radiation. In the same way that theSun radiates Heat, some of which is absorbed by the Earth, the earth too radiates heat out into space in the form of infra red and other electro magnetic radiation, thus cooling the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transf...

Answer 5

The Earth is warming up.  The radiation you talk about is decreased because of the ozone layer.  Also the Earth countinues to move closer to the sun a small fraction we'll never see due to the gravity.  If your asking about global warming due to how we have treated our planet, we probably will never see the outcome of how going green has changed things since it takes so long for it to truely to change anything.