EVE General Discussion

Now, you know that the whole point of radiating heat is that it doesn't use particles, right (well, beyond photons, which is always a matter of perspective)?

Space has plenty of particles, but not enough to make use of convection or conduction, so radiation is the standard mode of heat transfer out there.
No. Heat is a form of energy. In matter, it generally manifests in the form vibration — kinetic energy, if you want to simplify it. But that is not the only manifestation it has. Another very very common one is EM radiation. There's a reason why IR cameras pick up heat signatures…
…except that big radiators is how all spacecraft since… oh… forever, have dumped their excessive heat. So no, the wingy bits on Minmatar ships could most certainly be radiators.

space is not a true vacuum........... why do people think space is a true vacuum....

a true vacuum would be devoid of matter... space is full of matter

Definition of a Vacuum

has anyone in this thread ever used a thermos?

They've got a proper name, you know.

Well

The main difference in space is you can only transfer heat to space by Radiant or Mass Transfer means, while on earth with its atmosphere you can use Conduction, Convection, Radiant or Mass Transfer.

Conduction or diffusion
You transfer the energy between objects that are touching

Convection
You transfer the energy between an object and its surroundings by the fluid movement of another substance (eg. Air, Water)

Radiation
You transfer the energy to or from a body by the emission or absorption of electromagnetic radiation

Mass Transfer
The transfer of energy from one location to another by physically moving an object containing that energy

The final one has been used in space by telescopes that used Liquid Nitrogen & or Liquid Helium to cool their instruments . In those cases the evaporation of the liquid cooled the instruments, it also means they have a limited lifespan as they fail after they use up all their liquid supply

As an example here is a company the specialises in Satellite cooling:

Thermacore: - Thermal Management Solutions

Finally if the 'sail thingies' are not radiators, then if the current modifications to the Standard Model of the Universe are correct then Dark Matter & Dark Energy could provide the weird particles or energies required for reactor or warp drive to work, in that case the 'sail thingies' would absorb them for the warp drive or reactor!

Uh...solar wind FTW.

From Wikipedia:

'The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun.'

And the crew of the space shuttle, on some of its early missions, noted that the shuttle's heat-shield absorbed heat form the sun and expanded, producing an audible 'roaring' noise within the spacecraft.

Besides, if there was no way for heat to radiate in a vacuum, Earth would be a block of ice.

I was tempted to speculate about tachyon sails, but I realize now that I think about it that there wouldn't be a way to decelerate a spacecraft with a tachyon engine (according to the current hypothesis, tachyons can't travel at sub-light speeds).

Given what we know of New Eden spacecraft, though, we can form a working hypothesis:

A typical frigate-sized spacecraft is powered by a fairly large capacitor-- take the Incursus, for example, with a base capacitor charge of 325 gJ. That's roughly three hundred billion joules (for comparison, a barrel of oil contains about six gigajoules of potential chemical energy when combusted). We know that a portion of the capacitor's charge is expended to propel the ship into warp.

Now, the issue with storing and expending that much energy is the sheer amount of heat it generates; the pilot and crew would probably be roasted alive the minute the ship entered warp, or the core would melt down. We can assume, since we don't wake up in a clone bay after every jump, and the ship comes out of warp intact, that there is some form of coolant employed.

We can reasonably assume that the Caldari, Gallente, and Amarr cycle the coolant through the hull of the spacecraft and back into the engine system. From an engineering standpoint, that makes sense; the exterior hull is exposed to space, which is unbelievably cold. The heat radiates away into space, and the coolant is pumped back into the engine.

Minmatar spacecraft, on the other hand, are little more than a spaceframe and a couple of sticks in most cases. Aside from the Rifter and its up-tier sister ships, there isn't really a lot of hull there to use. Putting the superheated coolant into tanks is just silly (because you're really just shifting the heat around that way, instead of cooling it), and the sheer amount of energy required to pump heated coolant through a maze of pipes all over the hull would make that method very inefficient.

So, based on the above, we can draw the conclusion that the 'wingy bits' on a Minmatar ship are most likely radiating panels; they present a large, flat surface (which gives a lot of space from which heat can bleed off), the cold of space 'leeches' the heat from the coolant, and it's then pumped back into the engine system again.

TL;DR: A wizard did it. Yay wizards! :)

Light can travel as a wave or a particle, so long as it is traveling as light infrared or otherwise. It can then leave the radiator entering the dark cold void that is space.

Another explanation could be cold spots being created on a highly conductive material absorbing and dissipating heat at a rapid pace.

Question: since we can sit a ship near/on/in a star, do we really expect physical radiators to be adequate enough to keep the ship cool?

Might as well just say that we dump excess heat into subspace or that the ship's shields radiate energy/heat.