of your toaster oven, nuclear reactors, and so forth. But, if we're just talking about

regular old sun-heats-the-earth climate and weather, where on the earth's surface is hottest?

Some might say "Death Valley," which isn't a bad guess, as the 56.7°Celsius temperature

observed 100 years ago on July 10, 1913-- at aptly named Furnace Creek -- remains, according

to official weather statistics, the highest temperature ever recorded.

However, weather stations measure air temperature in the shade about a meter and a half above

the ground.  And as you know if you've ever walked barefoot across a beach on a hot day,

surfaces in direct sunlight can be a lot hotter than the air just above them.

Plus, there are only 11,119 official weather stations scattered across the globe, which

equates to only 1 station every 13,000 square kilometers, or about six on average for an

area the size of Scotland (not that Scotland is a leading candidate for heat waves). Super

hot places like deserts are particularly harsh and remote, making weather stations impractical

and even less common.

So to find the true hottest place on earth, we need an army of meteorology students to

install and monitor thermometers on every inch of the planet. Or we could measure the

the temperature of the earth from space... which NASA does, every day. The Terra and

Aqua satellites carry instruments called spectroradiometers which detect the infrared radiation, that

is, the heat, radiating from the Earth's surface. Their resolution isn't amazing, since the

satellites measure temperature averaged over each square kilometer of the globe, but that's

still 13,000 times better than weather stations.

And the winner for hottest square kilometer on earth? Not Furnace Creek - it only clocked

in at 62.7C. Not the "Scorched Wheat" plateau in the Lut Desert of Iran, either, despite

repeated claims to be the hottest place on earth. However, it's close - a nearby portion

of the Lut Desert is the winner at 70.7C, or 159.3F. That's one degree hotter than you

need for the proteins in an egg yolk to coagulate - that is, to cook. No need for your toaster

oven - breakfast is served.