Does there need to be oxygen in a space for there to be heat.
Asked by
Blobman (
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June 14th, 2009
I know you need to have oxygen for there to be fire but is that true for heat too.
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7 Answers
ooohhh you meant heat…well I don’t know how to explain that but the are stars in space and they’re hot so there you go
No. You do not need O2 for heat. Heat could be something as simple as molecules with a lot of kinetic energy. It has nothing to do with oxygen.
No, it could be any element or compound.
No, stars such as our sun work on thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium. Our sun isn’t big enough to fuse to oxygen yet, but it still produces enormous quantities of heat. Combustion is not the only method of producing heat.
If you are talking about the presence of heat rather than production, heat is the oscillation of atoms (mainly contributed to by electrons) in a particular energy band.
Let’s not forget the transfer of energy in the form of radiation. This only requires radiation (some form of electromagnetic wave) and a source that receives it.
@Shuttle128 Heat can be transferred by infra-red electromagnetic waves, but that is not heat until it interacts with the receptive atoms (as you mentioned). However I think this question is aimed at heat production rather than transmission since @Blobman refers to conventional combustion.
No heat can be transferred through many ways many not including oxygen
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