Why the Moon Has Extreme Temperatures: How Lunar Heat Can Boil Water and Freeze Everything
Imagine placing a cup of coffee on a rock beneath the blazing midday Sun. On Earth, you might expect the coffee to warm slowly. On the Moon, however, the situation is very different. The lunar surface can become hot enough to boil water under direct sunlight, while only a few meters away, a shadow can be extraordinarily cold. This sounds almost impossible. How can the same world be both an inferno and a deep-freeze? The answer lies in something we normally take completely for granted: Earth's atmosphere . Our atmosphere does far more than provide oxygen for breathing. It transports heat, moderates temperatures, creates winds, distributes energy around the planet, and prevents the surface from experiencing the enormous temperature swings that would otherwise occur between sunlight and darkness. The Moon has essentially none of those advantages. Its atmosphere is so thin that scientists classify it as an exosphere , containing only trace quantities of gases. There is no conventional ...