1Hi, it's Esther.
2Want to see something cool?
3Check it out.
4This is Venus, the second planet from the Sun.
5Actually, it's not cool at all.
6Since it's so close to the Sun, it's really hot.
7See all those clouds?
8Those clouds trap that heat in,
9which makes it even hotter,
10almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
11In heat like that, even some metals like lead would melt.
12Someone named Miguel has a question about hot places, but on a different planet.
13Let's give Miguel a call now.
14Hi Esther.
15Hi Miguel.
16I have a question for you. What is the hottest place on Earth?
17That's a great question.
18Though the air temperature on Earth doesn't get as hot as Venus,
19there are places on our planet that can get pretty warm.
20Like these colorful geothermal pools I visited in Yellowstone National Park.
21The water in these pools can get to almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit,
22which is almost as hot as the boiling water you cook pasta in.
23And see the water shooting out of these undersea vents?
24That water can reach 700 degrees,
25almost as hot as the temperature on Venus.
26Oh, and check out the lava in this volcano in Hawaii.
27That lava is over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
28Now, all those places are super hot,
29but there's another way to tell how hot a place is:
30by measuring the temperature of the air outside.
31Like the heat you feel when you go out to play on a sunny day.
32And depending on where you live, that air temperature can get pretty warm sometimes.
33Before I go on, I'm curious.
34What's the hottest place you've ever been?
35I don't know how you answered, but I bet some of you have been to some pretty warm places.
36I grew up in Chicago, and in the summer, the temperature would rise past 90 degrees sometimes.
3790 degrees feels pretty hot.
38We'd start to sweat when we were outside, even when we weren't exercising.
39Some people would even hang out in shopping centers or buildings where there was air conditioning
40just so they could stay cool.
41Yeah, Chicago can get pretty hot,
42but there are a lot of places in the world that can get a lot hotter.
43And that's when things can really start to get uncomfortable.
44You can burn your feet if you're walking barefoot on the sidewalk.
45And some things can even start to melt,
46like crayons and even candy like gummy bears.
47We can tell what the temperature is outside at home by using a thermometer like this one.
48There are also special thermometers and weather stations all over the world.
49Weather stations have special tools that help scientists measure things like rainfall and air temperature.
50With stations like these, scientists can measure the temperature of the air in faraway places.
51Like this one:
52for almost a hundred years, scientists thought El Azizia in the deserts of Libya was the hottest place on Earth
53when a thermometer there reached a scorching 136 degrees.
54But here's the thing.
55Scientists now think that it might not have actually been quite that hot in El Azizia that day.
56They just don't think the temperature there was measured in the right way.
57To figure out who has the record for the hottest place on Earth,
58we can't just wave any thermometer in the air and get it right.
59We need to be careful to measure the temperature the same way everywhere so it's fair.
60One way to do that is to make sure to put the thermometer in the right place.
61It's kind of like if you and your friend were having a contest to see who lived in the hottest city.
62You wouldn't want to put your thermometer in a car that's been sitting in the sun all day to measure the air temperature.
63It would be a lot warmer in the car than outside,
64and that would make your city seem a lot hotter than it really is.
65That wouldn't be fair to your friend.
66In the same way, you wouldn't want to put your thermometer under a tree either,
67because it would be cooler there than in places with no shade.
68And that wouldn't be fair to you.
69And that's one of the reasons scientists think the record-breaking temperature at El Azizia was wrong.
70The thermometer used to measure the record temperature wasn't put in the right place.
71It was put on top of concrete that got really hot in the sun,
72kind of like the inside of a car gets.
73So a few years ago, scientists realized that because the temperature wasn't measured correctly,
74the actual hottest place might be somewhere else.
75Somewhere called Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California,
76a place that once reached a temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit,
77one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded.
78Now, it's important to know that the 134-degree temperature in Furnace Creek
79was also measured a long time ago.
80And just like the thermometer in El Azizia,
81some scientists think the Furnace Creek thermometer wasn't in the right place either.
82Some even think the person measuring the temperature may have measured it wrong.
83But even after they moved the thermometer to a better place,
84Furnace Creek continues to reach some of the highest temperatures on Earth.
85About two years ago, the weather station thermometer at Furnace Creek recorded a temperature of 130 degrees.
86That's so hot.
87People that were there that day said that it felt like they were standing under a giant hair dryer.
88Today, Furnace Creek holds the record for the hottest temperature ever measured.
89But that doesn't mean it's the hottest place on Earth.
90Here's why.
91The Earth is huge.
92So huge that there aren't enough weather stations in the world to measure the temperature everywhere.
93Some of the hottest places on Earth, like parts of the Sahara and Gobi deserts, are really hard to get to.
94There are no roads and no places to get water,
95so scientists haven't set up weather stations there yet.
96Satellites from space can measure temperature,
97but they aren't as accurate as actually having thermometers on Earth.
98So without a thermometer on the ground, we really don't know how hot a place is.
99So it might be that there are hotter places than Furnace Creek.
100We just haven't measured the temperature there yet.
101So, in summary, as of 2023,
102Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California, holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded
103at 130 degrees.
104But even so, it may not be the hottest place on Earth.
105There are lots of places without weather stations that might be even hotter.
106We just haven't measured the temperature there yet.
107And who knows?
108By the time you see this episode,
109there might be a new record for the hottest place.
110That's all for this week's question.
111Thanks, Miguel, for asking!