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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Wonderfully the paper is available: http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973429 consider swapping the link for this one.

Reading through the paper I have to admit those are some really impressive numbers. A typical soldering station might run at 343C (650F) while Venus is 460C (860F) hotter than a reflow oven to be sure.

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To clarify for anyone as dim as I - Venus is 460C (860F) and is hotter to be sure than a typical soldering station, which runs at around 340C (or 650F) - it's not the case that Venus is 460C hotter than a reflow oven.

This is where a grammar enthusiast might extol the virtues of the em dash.

> ...while Venus is 460C (860F)--hotter than a reflow oven, to be sure.

The best part of that comparison is that solder might not even melt on Venus at that temperature. The atmospheric pressure on the surface is roughly 90 atm which is the pressure you'd experience if you were 1,000 meters underwater. Even modern nuclear attack submarines made out of titanium and high strength alloys can barely go past 800 meters without completely losing structural integrity so solder would probably be under way too much pressure to change phase from solid to liquid.

> under way too much pressure to change phase from solid to liquid.

Nope. 90 bar is way too little for that. You'll need to crank up pressure to ~70 kilobar to get solid tin a at 460'C (733'K). [1]

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_tin...

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