Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/28/coldest-temperature-ever-recor.html
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My first ship traveled through the Arctic Circle behind an ice breaker. We regularly endured -80 to -90 degrees Fahrenheit. Colder than a well diggers ass.
BTW: Gas / Petrol freezes at -150 degrees.
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But please
Celsius has such a better ring to it.
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Question: At those temperatures, how long was any individual permitted to be outside on deck? And what kind of protective gear did they make you wear?
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Would my ex’s heart count for the coldest temperature on earth? /s
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Oh, they won’t make you wear anything at all. You can go for a jog in your Speedo, but you won’t get far.
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That is cold enough for carbon dioxide to precipitate and fall as snow, which happens at -78.5 C. (-109.3° F)
edited to add: Or not. See dmpalmer’s reply. I was simply looking up melting and boiling points to try and find things that are on a different side of a phase change than usual. As if often the case, things are actually more complicated.
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Doesn’t count; that’s man-made.
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I’ve never been on a ship in cold weather, but the folks who flew me to the South Pole on an HC-130 Hercules plane made everyone on the plane wear our ECW gear (big boots, big red parka, insulated Carhartt overalls) in case of trouble. But it only got down to -40 while I was there, so I have no idea what -100C would be like. Probably damn cold.
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To make it clear: i can’t take anything serious until it is in SI units, but I’d make an exception for °C.
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Lol well said. I could continue with the back and forth though i’d hate to give the impression that i hate my ex. We actually have a good friendship 
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Max exposure is 45 minutes for a human in good physical condition with sub-arctic gear on. As well you can’t breath that air directly into your lungs without doing permanent damage, so you have any number of apparatus that must cover your mouth / nose at all times. Essentially you are wearing a thermos, that can only keep you alive for 30 - 45 minutes.
BTW: Clearing the deck of ice to ward off the possibility of the ship capsizing was a constant mandatory fun / exercise. The life of the ship and its crew was in the balance at any given time, gosh I really miss that…
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No units in the article whatsoever. I literally have no idea if we’re talking about farenheit or celsius.
Nearly 15 degrees colder than the previous record-breaking coldest temperature, which was -128 degrees in 1983 near the South Pole, the temperature in Antarctica dropped to -144 degrees Fahrenheit
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But it’s a DRY snow.
(I never thought about such a thing as naturally produced dry ice on this planet. Yeesh!)
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At -100 C, it looks like the sublimation pressure is about 0.15 atmospheres. So if you have some pure CO2 in a bag it would freeze. If you have pure CO2 in a sealed rigid jar, 85% of it would freeze until the pressure in the jar was 0.15 atmosphere (2 PSI absolute, -13 PSI gauge).
If you had some dry ice and wrapped it so the CO2 didn’t escape, it would stay as dry ice.
But CO2 would not condense out of the air because (even at its current 410 PPM = 0.041%) its partial pressure is well below 0.15 atmosphere.
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On the one hand, it matters, on the other hand, you have frostbite already.
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At that temperature, just a few breaths of air would induce hemorrhaging in your lungs and quickly lead to death.
Are you hemorrhaging, or are you flash-freezing your lungs with every breath, making them less and less effective as your lungs become more and more of an ice cube?
The alveoli of one lung (artist’s conception)
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If you had a pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, then it would be in equilibrium with solid carbon dioxide at -78.5C. But the partial pressure of carbon dioxide may be 1% or 0.1% of that, so it probably won’t. The air has some water vapour below 100C. It still has some below 0C.
Bonkers cold, though.
