In 2004, Roland Emmerich, the king of disaster movies, brought us another vision of the end of the world in "The Day After Tomorrow".
During an expedition to collect ice cores in Antarctica, Jack witnessed the collapse of a large ice shelf, prompting him to issue a warning to the United Nations about the coming Ice Age. Unfortunately, his warning was ignored. They were proven right shortly thereafter when the largest storm - actually three storms acting together - descended on Earth.
These are not just any ordinary deadly storms that sway wind and water, they are even scarier because of the incredibly low temperatures they carry. Anything wrapped in their centers will freeze instantly, as the temperature inside is minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time the storm subsides, Jack believes the world will enter a new ice age.
While the speed, ferocity, and cold temperatures of the storms in "The Day After Tomorrow" are mind-boggling, they do foreshadow the extreme environments on Earth still waiting to be discovered. In 2013, nearly a decade after the film's release, NASA scientists identified the coldest place on Earth, a place that rivals the eye of Emmerich's fictional storm.
When scientists were studying the snow dunes on the East Antarctic Plateau, the search for the coldest place in the world began. They noticed cracks in the snowpack between the dunes and hypothesized that as temperatures cooled, the snowpack shrank and cracks appeared. In order for this to happen, the temperatures need to be incredibly cold, and scientists set out to find out just how cold they are.
East Antarctic Plateau
First, they used NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on the Terra and Aqua satellites, and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer on various NOAA satellites . The instruments provided low-resolution data on the East Antarctic Plateau and identified a 620-mile area on the high ridge between Argus and Fuji Domes where temperatures are extremely cold. Those initial scans also provided a hint that cooler temperatures may exist in pockets within the ridge.
The researchers then turned to thermal infrared sensors on the Landsat 8 satellite launched in February 2013, which provided higher resolution and pinpointed the precise location of the world's coldest spots. To be more precise, it should be said to be the coldest place in the world. The data shows that temperatures inside cavities along Antarctic ridges drop to freezing temperatures.
According to a recent post from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook, under the right conditions, these spaces can drop to minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Looking at 32 years of data, scientists found dozens of instances where temperatures plummeted into record-breaking territory. The coldest temperature detected so far occurred on August 10, 2010, when the thermometer in one of these Antarctic regions dropped to minus 136 degrees.
Such low temperatures stimulate our imagination. This temperature is much lower than the average temperature on Mars , while the average surface temperature on Mars is -46°C. There is breathable air in these Antarctic death traps, and they beat Mars in terms of temperature, but that's about it. Either way, you'll be a corpse in a matter of minutes.
The National Weather Service's frostbite timeline shows frostbite can occur as low as minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit. This is much warmer than we would expect in the Antarctic hollow, where frostbite is estimated to occur in less than five minutes. We couldn't find any firm numbers on how long you can last in the coldest place in the world, but we'd bet it won't be too long.
Due to a strange combination of geography and geology, the temperatures inside these Antarctica get so cold. Antarctic temperatures are already cold, which helps initiate the heat loss process.
When the sky is clear, ground temperatures become cooler as heat radiates into space. If the sky is clear long enough, temperatures can become so cold that a layer of extremely cold air collects on the surface. Not only is this air cooler than the surrounding air, it's also denser. As a result, it slides into depressions and caves, low spots in areas that are relatively untouched by sunlight or wind.The air can remain in place undisturbed for long periods of time while continuing to expel heat into space.
That's the secret to the coldest temperatures on Earth, so cold that even in 2004 they existed only in our imaginations. Now I want them to stay in Antarctica where they belong.
