Coldest place on earth

The coldest place on earth is Antarctica. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was -89.4 C (-129F) recorded in 1983 at the Russian Base Vostok in Antarctica.

Coldest Temperatures achieved on Earth

While temperatures may drop there some 70°C (degrees Celsius) below freezing point, this is still nothing compared to minimum temperatures achieved in cryogenic labs.

In 1904 Dutch scientist Kamerlingh Onnes created a special lab in Leiden to get to lower temperatures than anyone had done before. In 1908 he managed to lower the temperature to less than one degree above the absolute minimum, which is 273 degrees below the freezing point of water. Only in this exceptional cold will helium turn into a liquid (at -269 C). Onnes achieved this feat first. He received a Nobel prize for his efforts.

Modern experimenters achieve temperatures measured in hundred billionths of a degree above so-called absolute zero.

External Link

• Temperature statistics (http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/pole.temps) at the Amundsen-Scott station on the South Pole