Coldest Spot On Planet Earth Identified

Thorfinn.au sends this news from NASA: "What is the coldest place on Earth? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 92 degrees Celsius) on a clear winter night. Scientists made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., joined a team of researchers reporting the findings Monday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Researchers analyzed 32 years' worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 93.2 C was set Aug. 10, 2010."

Comments

I'm surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have guessed "inside Dick Cheney's heart".

Re:I'm surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the researchers' first thought too. But no matter how long they spent looking for it, they just could not find the damn thing, apparently it resides at a "secure undisclosed location".

Cool!

[jonyen]

That's a great place for a datacenter!

Re:Cool!

[Charliemopps]

Our data centers on snow covered mountains are the hardest to keep cool. Snow is an excellent insulator.

That is fucking cold.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Considering CO2 freezes at -78C... Yikes. That's cold...

Re:That is fucking cold.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Wow. So, what happens the atmospheric CO2 in that case? Would it precipitate as "dry ice" snow?

Re:That is fucking cold.

[careysub]

Wow. So, what happens the atmospheric CO2 in that case? Would it precipitate as "dry ice" snow?

Vapor pressure of carbon dioxide at -100 C: 100 mm. Actual partial pressure of CO2 on average in Earth's lower atmosphere: 0.3 mm. Partial pressure of CO2 in exhaled breath: 38 mm. So no, no dry ice snow - the vapor pressure is still too high. At around -110 C the possibility of "dry ice frost breath" becomes possible. It would have to be near -140 C before CO2 would start condensing out of the air.

Re:That is fucking cold.

[amaurea]

CO2 freezes at 78 C at a partial pressure of 1 atmosphere. That means that if the atmosphere were 100% CO2, and we were at sea level, but still at -93 C, then there would be CO2 snowing out of the atmosphere. However, the partial pressure of CO2 is much lower than 1 atmosphere simply because so little of the atmosphere is CO2. Since only 0.0397% of the air is CO2, and the local pressure (due to the high altitude) is about 0.65 atm, the partial pressure will be 2.6e-5 atmospheres. At that partial pressure the CO2 freezing temperature is less than -140 C (I couldn't find a diagram that went quite far enough down in pressure).

The physical reason for this is that there are two competing processes involved. CO2 molecules bumping into a solid speck of CO2 and getting stuck (freezing), and CO2 molecules shaking loose from a solid (sublimation). But the former process proceeds faster the more CO2 gas there is, i.e. the more often these collisions happen. Hence the dependence on the partial pressure.

My ex-wife's heart

[bstarrfield]

Certainly the coldest spot on earth... just saying.

Re:How long can you survive there?

[barakn]

At temperatures even warmer than that, people need special snorkels with heat exchangers to avoid freezing their lungs. Death would be by asphyxiation in mere minutes unless blood freezing in the skin caused some sort of high blood pressure event that triggers a heart attack first.

Re:From a friend of someone down there

[hubie]

A friend of mine winter-overed twice in Antarctica. They would play soccer at the South Pole and every now and again they would have to throw the ball in the microwave to warm it up and re-inflate it. Also, on New Years Eve they would go out every hour and have a drink at midnight in a different time zone. :P

Re:No slashdot article can be complete...

[tlhIngan]

No slashdot article can be complete until the remark about how much colder that place was before AGW kicked in.

Actually, it could be *warmer* before AGW.

AGW has an annoying effect of moving weather away from moderation to extremes. So the cold gets colder, the warms get hotter, the temperate drier or wetter (droughts/floods), etc.

That's the main effects of climate change - the weather starts hitting the extremes. You get drought, followed by extensive flooding, followed by drought, etc. Summers get hotter still, winters get even colder.

Re:Epic Fail.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We have been systematically funneling money away from people who would spend 90% to 100% of their income (the poor) towards the ones who would save/invest 90% to 99% of their income (the rich). We tax physical labor more (earned income tax) and treat investment income (dividend, capital gains) leniently. This has been going on for 30 years. Under the guises of Supply-side economics, trickle down theory or Reganomics. The result is capital markets are sloshing with excess investment. Companies are sitting on 2 trillion dollars of cash not knowing what to do or where to invest.

The solution is to pay attention to Demand-side economics, where we stop coddling the rich (the self proclaimed job creators) and tax them. If you believe in free markets, you should know that if this captialist won't create the job another capitalist will come along and create that job. They keep telling labor, "If A does not do the job, B will. No one is indispensable". Same thing is true for them too. If A is not willing to invest when there is a job to be done, B will. No single capitalist is indispensable. We have excess capital, and lack of demand. Create demand, jobs will follow.

Of course, all it takes is a few well placed media stories about "gun control" or "gay agenda" or "baby murders" and all the people who actually would stand to gain, gain a lot in fact, would vote against their own best economic interests.

Re:Epic Fail.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Someday you would realize, your job is created by the people consuming the product you make. If this particular investor did not create your job, some other investor would. That is the free market theory. No particular employee, including you is indispensable. No particular employer, including me, is indispensable. There is excess capital right now in the world financial market. They don't know what do with or where to invest. They chase the latest fad and create booms, bursts and bubbles. There is no one willing to borrow my money. They are offering me 2% or less for 2 year bonds. Supply side has run its course. Creating more incentives for investments would be very counter productive. There was a time, when we needed to encourage investments, may be 30 or 40 years ago. But right now we need to stop coddling the investors and job creators and fund the consumers, the demand siders to create long term prosperity.

I have tons of investments, not quite 1 percenter but quite high and getting there. And real long term viability of my investments, not next quarter or year or even decade depends on not screwing the economic base of this country.

Q: Coldest Spot On Planet Earth

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

A: Ex-Wife's Bedroom