Coldest spot on Earth...
Q:
Is Antarctica as cold as a freezer? (Lidia Jean, 4th grade, Takoma
Park, Maryland)
 A: It's even colder. Your home freezer is about 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
At the 2-mile high Vostok Station in Antarctica, scientists recorded
the world's lowest temperature: -129 degrees Fahrenheit.
Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest, windiest place on Earth. It
is so cold, the body fluids of tiny mites and midges there have an
antifreeze liquid called glycerol that protects them when
temperatures plummet as low as -30F. Some can even survive
freezing.
You can get colder in our solar system. Go to Neptune's moon,
Triton. The Voyager 2 space probe flew by Triton in 1989 and measured the coldest
temperature ever recorded: -390F. Triton is a strange moon--dark, frozen and covered
with salmon-pink snow made of nitrogen. Our dim sun shines like a Venus-bright star
there and sheds little warmth but enough power to shoot icy geysers miles into Triton's
mauve-colored sky. |
