Welcome to You Ask Andy

Edmond Mattosz Jr., age 11, of Gallup, N.M., for his question:

DOES IT RAIN IN OUTER SPACE?

Maybe it rains on other worlds that are similar to the planet earth. Maybe it snows and blows on colder worlds, farther than we are from a friendly neighborhood sun. But rain as we know it does not occur in the vast outer spaces between the stars and the planets. Nevertheless, things out there may be far from pleasantly calm, and some of the events can be compared on earthly storms.

Our rains and storms are created in the weathery layer of the atmosphere which extends just a few miles above the surface of the earth. Our showers and deluging rains are created in this hurly burly of gases and conflicting temperatures. And since our weather atmosphere does not extend out to the other planets, we can expect no showers in outer space.

True, no earth type umbrellas are needed out there, but space travelers must be protected from far more serious hazards. Before the Space Age, most people referred to it as empty space and assumed that the vast regions between the planets were filled with nothing at all. We now have proof that this is far from true.

Outer space is filled with something called plasma. Its particles of matter are much smaller than the gaseous atoms and molecules in our atmosphere. What's more, they are more widely separated. In order to fill a thimble with plasma, you might have to sweep the whole region between here and the moon.

However, this is not all. The regions of outer space are crossed by dynamic cosmic energies. Gravity from every speck of matter spans the universe, growing weaker as it goes. Light, radio and various other electromagnetic energies pour out in all directions from the seething stars.

These dynamic energies act upon the mini particles of space plasma. And there is more. The sun shoots out streams of speeding particles in all directions. This is the solar wind. When the surface of the sun is fairly calm, the solar wind is a gentle breeze.     When sunspots flare up, magentic storms spread through space and the solar wind goes on a wild rampage.

Though thin as an earth type vacuum, the plasma of outer space can act like a gentle breeze or a howling hurricane. And this is not all. There are countless meteors large and small, traveling among the spaces between the planets. An astronaut needs no umbrella to keep off the rain. But he needs plenty of protection from dynamic plasma and stray meteors.

 

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