Cold

These images from today’s 4x10km Men’s relay. (FilmLoop is a free photo broadcasting (“photocasting”) network that presents pictures in a “Loop” player on your desktop.)

PolarView have released a .kmz file for Google Earth providing more Antarctic data, including the location of drift buoys, larger identified icebergs, selected research vessels and research stations, as well as some higher resolution imagery. Naturally I was drawn to Troll, the Norwegian base on Queen Maud Land (named by a popular vote of Norwegian schoolchildren). Who knows whether I’ll ever make it to Antarctica for real, but in the meantime my name at least will be heading SOUTH with the Ben Saunders’ sledge.

Whilst doing some research on Food Science, and on Nicholas Kurti in particular, the so-called ‘father of Molecular Gastronomy’, I discovered that Oxford’s Science Area, where Kurti worked and not far from where I live, is renowned for once having been the ‘coldest spot on Earth’: “Using demagnetisation of nuclear alignment, Professor Kurti was able to create temperatures of a millionth of a degree above absolute zero.” Cool. Kurti’s interest in what he called ‘gastronomic physics’ also led him to invent an ‘Inverted Baked Alaska‘ which consisted of frozen meringue filled with piping hot apricot puree, described as ‘sticking a spoon into Iceland and getting an eyeful of magma’.