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!

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.

[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.

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.