system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Since the surface of the Sun is only ~14 times hotter than my oven when I'm baking a pizza, why am I able to feel the Sun's heat from 93 million miles away?
gpt
For one, the Stefan-Boltzmann law says that for a black body, the total power radiated per unit area scales with the *fourth* power of temperature. So the surface of the Sun may only be 14 times the absolute temperature, but the power radiated per unit time per unit area is multiplied by about 38,000.

In fact, this law is what was used to first estimate the temperature of the Sun. Suppose we know a certain object at a known temperature has some heat energy flux. We can then also measure the heat energy flux from the Sun across a region with known area. Comparing the two and using the SB-law then gives an estimate for the temperature of the Sun. (Stefan originally made an estimate of about 5700 K, which is very close to the actual value of 5778 K.) Note that for this method you also need some estimate of how much energy is absorbed by the atmosphere since only the energy flux at the surface of Earth was feasibly measurably at the time.