[dr_lew]

35K is plenty warmer than absolute zero. Liquid Helium is at 5K, and although it's kind of expensive, it's a standard laboratory material.

This NASA site says the surface of Triton ( a moon of Neptune ) is 38K, and this is colder than Pluto because of its low albedo. It doesn't have sheltered poles the way the moon does because of the extreme tilt of its orbit. However, one of its poles would point away from the sun for about 80 years at a time, and since its rotation is synchronous with its orbit, the poles should be oblique to Neptune itself, and I myself don't see why the "spaceward" pole wouldn't get colder than the average surface.

The wikipedia article on Triton has a lot of interesting related facts, but I don't see the question of temperature variation on the surface directly addressed. It says, "Little is known about the north pole because it was on the night side during the Voyager 2 encounter." ... and still is, I guess, although it has been 20 years.

I guess the key word is "known," because no temperature colder than 37K has been measured there.

[seastay]

Who would have thought Triton would be about as cold as our moon? Wondering if it is speculated that some places are colder, considering this is the coldest measured? Are there predictions of absolute zero existing anywhere in the universe?

[hadit2here]

[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"?