Web search says you're right - negative 162 Celsius / 260 fahrenheit! Wow! About twice as cold as the coldest natural place on earth apparently.

I think you are calculating as "twice the distance from 0 C", which is a relatively arbitrary zero point. Change the zero point and the ratios change.

The coldest measured temperature is -89.2 C, so -162 C is indeed about twice that C value.

However, in Kelvin that's 184 K for Vostok and 111 K for LNG, which is only 40% colder.

Don't downvote that - it's correct: the Celsius scale is an "interval scale" while the Kelvin scale is a "ratio scale". One must not take ratios of Celsius values as ratios are not even defined for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement

So, "about" twice as much then? ;)

This whole thread is very funny this morning, I was posting at 3AM and not thinking much. I am happy to be corrected, the more I learn to know here the more I learn I don't know or can't immediately recall. I damn this fickle lump of head thinkmeat, but praise the enlightened hive mind of internet commenters!

I can’t help but be reminded by your comment of this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

It is very reasonable to describe coldness as a distance from some reference temperature, such as room temperature.

How many people use kelvin to quantify temperature.

That's rather tangential to my point, which is the phrase "twice as cold" as used here is tricky to interpret.

What does "twice as cold" mean? In the US, is -2°F twice as cold as -1°F?

Yet that's only -18.33°F to -18.89°F, so only 0.3% colder if you change temperature scale.

Is 16°F twice as cold as 32°F? Or half as warm?

Is -10C infinitely colder than 0C?

I used Kelvin as an example of how the ratio depends on the scale chosen, not because it's popular.

Note that Rankin (Rankin is to Fahrenheit as Kelvin is to Celsius) would give the same answer as Kelvin - both Rankin and Kelvin are absolute scales of temperature, and would better candidates for defining what "twice as cold" means.

(Though even better would be to say "half has hot".)

However, I was not saying that we should all use Kelvin, only that the phrase is tricky to interpret.

I think the point is that -2C is not twice as cold as -1C, that would imply that -1C was infinitely more cold than 0C.

An analogy is the same as seen with percentages. It's wrong to say, for instance, that 2% growth, it's double of 1% growth.

Everyone who cares about precision or thermodynamics?

I was about to make the same comment: the freezing point of water is a really odd choice to make up a ratio for.

If you have to do it, you’d almost always use Kelvin, or in a pinch the equilibrium temperature of a big greenhouse 1 AU from the sun, i.e. 20C.

You’re underestimating the HN crowd. I’d expect everyone halfway scientifically literate to have an understanding of the Kelvin scale. It’s also quite an intuitive scale, physically, especially if you’re coming from Celsius.

I think you're wrong. I suspect most people on HN have an above average interest in physics and would therefore have a reasonable understanding of the Kelvin temperature scale.

I learned kelvin in high school chemistry and I'm not sure why you wouldn't use kelvin when talking about liquids that far negative in celsius/fahrenheit and that close to absolute zero.

Sure, I learned kelvin 20 years ago in chem too but in the last 20 years the only time I see it mentioned is literally on HN. Or GamersNexus.

> So like 3 people...

Just about everything human-built around you had someone consider the thermodynamics of it during the design.