How Hot is it, Really?

Blistering hot temperatures, and sweltering afternoons usually ending in a swift and torrential downpour: just another typical afternoon to be found in East Tennessee during the summer months. This week had the added incentive of a heat wave. Needless to say, many people are more than a little miserable. You might even find yourself wondering how unfortunate it is to try to thrive in heat, but be assured that a simmering summer in the south is miniscule compared to some less hospitable parts of the globe.

Heat is a part of daily life on earth, even between the winter and the summer months. A common misconception is that summer is created because it is the time of year when the earth’s orbit in rotation is closest to the sun. According to NASA, summer is not caused by the earth being close to the sun in its orbit. Our orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, but rather an oval. In fact, we are farther from the sun during the summer months than we are in the winter months. So you might be asking yourself where all the heat comes from during the summer months. The heat that we experience is caused by Earth’s tilt as we orbit, the earth is titled toward and away from the sun causing two separate effects. Days are longer, giving the earth plenty of time to heat up during the day, and the sun’s rays come in at a direct angle, giving them ample opportunity to bounce off the ground and make those temperatures climb.

The hottest day ever recorded on Earth, according to Express UK, was a whopping 136 degrees Fahrenheit in Libya on September 13, 1922. That is nothing compared to the hottest man-made temperature recorded at 72 trillion degrees Fahrenheit, which is 250,000 times hotter than the core temperature of the sun.

These mind-blowing temperatures might lead one to believe the old myth about being able to fry an egg on the sidewalk on a hot day. The experiment of frying the egg has been done by youtubers and scientists alike. Even Bill Nye took a shot at it in the 130 degree heat of Death Valley and it didn’t work. According to Live Science, the concrete on sidewalks tends to be lighter colored, and they observed that it absorbed less heat than it conducts. This makes concrete a poor heat conductor, leading to the egg actually tending to evaporate in the heat, and while most of the whites congeal they do not fry. This makes it a fairly bad idea for more than one reason to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

Still fired up over the heat? Our solar system has even higher temperatures in store. The sun’s core is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit but that pales in comparison to the core of Jupiter, coming in at 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. A little closer to home, temperatures are so hot at a mine in South Africa at 150 degrees that ice must be pumped in for workers to keep them from perishing. The heat can be a lot to deal with for most of us, but it’s nice to know that at least our boiling trauma can be dealt with in the AC with a cool drink.

Source: Elizabeth Lane, Jefferson County Post Staff Writer