BR-R-R-ADFORD: Now that we’ve had a taste of an old-fashioned
Bradford winter, we’ll share some facts about what happens when the
weather really gets cold — say polar cold.

In the recently published book “Cold: Adventures in The World’s
Frozen Places,” author Bill Streever relays the hard “cold” facts
about what happens in frigid temperatures.

He tells us that one-fifth of the world’s land area covers the
permafrost zone. And that boreal frogs, which he terms “amphibian
Popsicles,” will overwinter in a frozen state only to thaw out
later. Yellow-jacket wasps can live through temperatures as low as
4 degrees just by not moving, but if even so much as a snowflake
hits them, they will flash freeze to death.

“A crossbill needs to find a spruce seed every seven seconds” to
survive, he informs us, because of how quickly it loses body heat.
A polar bear, on the other hand, “wears the equivalent of eight or
10 wool sweaters under its fur” to act as insulation against the
arctic chill.

Streever tells us that 19th-century scientists termed the state
of absolute zero “frigor.”  Absolute zero, by the way, clocks in at
minus 459 degrees below zero.  It’s where the movement of molecules
is at their slowest, but molecules never completely stop
moving.

Scientists in the past tried to reach absolute zero by traveling
to the extreme north and south poles where things explode and it’s
cold enough to crack both glass and metal. But even though no one
has yet reached absolute zero, he tells us that it gets awfully
otherworldly in such extreme temperatures.

“Rubber, ivory, feathers and sponges phosphoresced with their
own bluish glow,” he writes.

Such cold causes molecules, that actively bounce around when
it’s warm, to get sluggish in the cold. “At 40 below,” he writes,
motor oil has a consistency close to that of warm tar … copper wire
grows stiff and breaks. Windshields crack from the tap of road
gravel.”

One researcher so fascinated with the cold sought out a
hibernating bear in its den and leaned his head against the bear’s
chest to count its heartbeats.

We know that whenever it dips below zero in Bradford, it becomes
a different world, causing all five senses to go on the alert. It’s
almost as if the cold assaults you, and surviving such local
“frigor” goes to the top of the priority list.