[I'm not a scientist, rocket or otherwise, and I've never stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, but I have had some experience in writing, editing and publishing.] Taking into consideration that this
was filtered through some "journalist"- who may or may not know the difference between Kelvin and Calvin - and that the phrase isn't in quotes but when someone makes a statment like:
This means the shadowed floors within Cabeus and its neighbors are the most frigid places known in the entire solar system
I get really torqued... Any scientist who makes such an absolute, sweeping and, yes, ignorant statement like that makes anything else they say totally suspect.
When he has measured absolutely every square millimeter in the solar system, and documented it all, then he may be able to make such a statement with authority. But would any serious scientist make such a sweeping - and possibly easily disproven -statement? I've read a few other similar sweeping absolutes supposedly made by scientists and they just grate on my nerves when I see them in print.
Yes I'm aware that it says "known in the solar system", but there is a LOT of "known" solar system that hasn't been measured, temperature-wise. I'm also aware that "may, might, could and possibly" can often be used as weasel words, but in this case wouldn't "are possibly the most frigid" be a little more "scientific"?
Yes I'm aware that it says "known in the solar system", but there is a LOT of "known" solar system that hasn't been measured, temperature-wise.It says, "most frigid places known in the entire solar system," not "most frigid places in the entire known solar system."
Anyway, here is the language from the NASA science page ( note garbled editing ) : "Diviner has recorded minimum daytime brightness temperatures in portions of these craters of less than 35K (-397° F) in the coldest areas. These are to our knowledge, these super-cold brightness temperatures are among the lowest that have been measured anywhere in the solar system, including the surface of Pluto."
... so it is more tentative than the cited article. Check out the infrared images, though. These are quite remarkable. The darker areas in figure 5 are the supercold spots at the south pole:
