WeatherQuesting with April Holladay, Article printer-friendly version

Coldest spot on Earth...

Q:  Is Antarctica as cold as a freezer?  Lidia Jean, 4th grade, Takoma Park, Maryland

Adelie penguins, Antarctica.   Photo courtesy of Commander John Bortniak, NOAA.

A:  It's even colder. Your home freezer is about 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18C). At the 2-mile (3-km) high Vostok Station in Antarctica, scientists recorded the world's lowest temperature: -129 degrees Fahrenheit (-89C).

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 (-34C).

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 (-234C). 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.

(Answered January 2000; updated Oct. 16, 2007)

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