By Arvin Vincent, IANS
New Delhi : The big question numbing Delhiites is a prediction that the temperature in the city may touch zero degree Celsius on Friday. Even weather experts are divided over the certainty of such a drop.
“It (the drop) is unlikely,” says India Meteorological Department Director S.C. Bhan. Maybe zero is not coming at all but here are a few things chilly that will make you huddle under a blanket with hot tea.
One for the cold –
At minus 2.5 degrees Celsius, Brewer Coors’ Sub Zero is the world’s coldest draught beer, which is served at the same temperature as an ice-lolly. The lager, which took eight years and 10 million pounds to develop, gets its fizz from US space technology. Sub Zero can be poured so cold because ultrasonic waves are sent through the lager, triggering the formation of ice crystals around gas bubbles in the drink.
Scoop this –
Cryogenically frozen at minus 190 degrees and served to you at minus 40 degrees, Mini Melts is the coldest ice cream in the world. Normal ice cream must have air whipped into it to enable it to be scooped. Mini Melts has no air whipped into it, which means you are eating 100 percent pure solid ice cream.
Artyk not Arctic –
Spare a thought for the residents of Artyk, a small village in deepest Siberia. It was minus 50 degrees Wednesday in the village. Artyk is less than 240 km from Oimyakon, known as the Pole of Cold, the world’s coldest inhabited place, where temperatures can get down to minus 70.
The Coldest Day of Tennis –
On Jan 1 last year, the US Tennis Association (USTA) Northern organised the Coldest Day of Tennis and tried to set a world record for the coldest tennis match ever played (currently this record does not exist). The match started at 8 a.m. with a temperature reading of minus 16 degrees Celsius and ended at 11 a.m. at minus 4. The big challenge was keeping the tennis balls warm enough so that they would bounce. The balls were kept warm in a car that had its engine running, and exchanged every five minutes.
World’s coldest swim –
British adventurer Lewis Gordon Pugh swam one kilometre in July 2007 near the North Pole to highlight the effects of global warming and break his own record for the world’s coldest swim. Sporting just a swimming cap, trunks and goggles, Pugh swam one km in minus 1.8 degrees. “Most people have no idea that you can find patches of open sea at the North Pole in summer,” said Pugh, who set the record for the coldest human swim off Antarctica at zero degree.
Need a blanket –
Dehydrated larvae of the African chironomid Polypedilum vanderplanki are able to withstand exposure to minus 270 degrees Celsius for up to five minutes with a 100 percent survival rate. Surprisingly, the insect able to survive the lowest temperature is not found in polar regions but in tropical West Africa.
The coldest ever –
Physicists acknowledge they can never reach the coldest conceivable temperature, known as absolute zero and long ago calculated to be minus 273.15 Celsius. But some are intent on getting as close as possible. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) holds the record – at least according to Guinness World Records 2008 – for lowest temperature: 810 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. The MIT team accomplished the feat in 2003 while working with a cloud – about a thousandth of an inch across – of sodium molecules trapped in place by magnets.
And by the way, the world’s coldest official temperature is the minus 89.4 Celsius recorded at the Russian Vostok Station in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.