Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

t — . =. : als AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION atoms or molecules to change vacuum, cannot be either energy. So, no substance, no temperature. Just to make it quite clear. - We can say, for sake of simplicity, that heat and mole- cular motion are so closely aligned that they are. almost the same. Apply heat and the molecular motion will in- crease; remove heat and it will decrease. A substance with a low molecular motion —a cold body—will absorb heat from one with a high molecular motion—a hot body. That is why you put ice cubes in soft drinks, not to dilute them, but to cool them. But space is a vacuum and has no substance whatsoever, aside from a scattering of atoms which, for our purpose, we can ignore. And a vacuum cannot transfer heat from one object to another, which is why it is used for insulating purposes ; a vacuum flask will keep liquids hot because of that lack of heat-exchange. So, space, because it is a 122 Kap ; ; - PrN eet K,\ . v/ie ’) “eil4 NA Pate “‘hot” or “cold.” Space has no temperature at all. But what about things in space? It is possible that, — somewhere in the void, there my 4 rh are meteors and other cosmic debris which are at absolute — zero. Absolute zero is the — lowest theoretical temperature possible and is nought degrees Kelvin, which is degrees Centi- grade plus 273. Water freezes at 273 degrees Kelvin and boils at 373 degrees Kelvin, while body temperature is 303 degrees Kelvin. On the ~ Centigrade scale, absolute zero would be — 273 degrees, and at this temperature all molecu- lar motion would have ceased. Remember, we are talking about objects in space, not space itself. The “absolute zero” of space belongs only in fiction. All right, now let’s get nearer home. A meteor crashes through the hull, the air escapes into the vacuum leav- ing behind a thin rime of frost. Cold? Certainly, but Comichooks;com oS a aad pS