Meteorologists over the years have become experts in vicarious observation, deducing plausible estimates of temperature in places they have never been. They tell us, for example, that the sun sizzles at about 5,500C, and that Venus and Mars have average temperatures of around 470C and minus 50C respectively. They have even estimated the temperature in heaven and in hell.
Information about hell is plentiful. Vivid, and presumably reliable, descriptions appear in many of the classics such as Dante's Inferno, Homer's Odyssey and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Those who prefer to do their research in English can consult Spenser's Faerie Queene, or Milton's Paradise Lost which provides an excellent overview:
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flam'd; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe.
But for hard information on which calculations can be based, one cannot beat the Bible. In Revelation, Chapter 21, we learn that in the case of "the cowards, the unbelievers, the abominable, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone". If such a lake exists in hell, it follows that the air temperature there must be below the boiling point of sulphur, or something like 440C at maximum.
Heaven is more difficult to fathom. The hottest clue to its meteorological conditions comes from chapter 30 of Isaiah, which describes the heavenly illuminations: "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."
So back in the 1970s a group of scientists applied a well-known relationship in physics called Stefan's Law, which relates the temperature of an object to the amount of light it receives, and calculated heaven's temperature to be a sweltering 525C, nearly 100 degrees hotter than hell. It was a conclusion, naturally enough, which caused widespread meteorological, theological and metaphysical misgivings.
According to a recent issue of the New Scientist, however, this estimate has been revised. Two physicists from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain have discovered that their predecessors misinterpreted the passage in Isaiah, wrongly multiplying seven by seven to make the illumination in heaven 49 times greater than that experienced on Earth.
The Archbishop of Madrid apparently confirms that only a single factor of seven was intended in the Bible, and as a result the temperature of heaven turns out to be a mere 230C - uncomfortably warm, some folks might say, but at least not quite as hot as hell.