sethoflagos

'Value' is too ambiguous a term here. Although it remains highly subjective in degree, 'artistic merit' in terms of craftsmanship, relevance and depth of personal expression is a better concept to work with I think. This at least excludes the market value of exclusive private ownership of the work which I see as an entirely separate (arguably psychotic) consideration. Some of the above posts seem not to make a clear, or indeed any, distinction between the two measures.

We're not there yet. Your OP seemed to suggest an inviscid classical orbital velocity field about some (undefined) axis of rotation: ie some particular solution of the Euler equations for some undefined geometry. The first thing you have to help us get our heads around is what exactly you mean by the word 'vortex' for a system that sounds as if it should have a local vorticity field value of zero throughout. It will differ appreciable from the familiar(ish) picture we have of vortex phenomena in viscous fluids. Maybe tell us the geometry of your containment? How you get the superfluid rotating in the first place? How does local fluid velocity vary with distance from the axis of rotation? Reassure us that the Euler equations aren't going to start producing singularities (which they are apt to do when presented with non-physical boundary conditions) Probably easier just to start and finish with this. Will a frictionless wall stop the car? 🤔 (I don't think this is quite as silly a question in context as it sounds. Again, how would one persuade a superfluid to rotate?)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_English_Working_Class Recent events following the 2024 UK general election have reminded me of how much this book influenced me in the late '70s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Read The collection of essays 'Anarchy & Order' concerning (broadly) the role of art within a left-leaning libertarian framework is difficult to obtain outside the UK second hand market. But we'll worth discovering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_to_Freedom Tied up a lot of loose ends for me and far easier to read than Being and Nothingness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-Fé_(novel) Just 'must reads' imho. Beware: may cause offence to people called Karen (among others)

That's my reading too. Must say that I'd be more swayed by better hard corroborating field evidence to support the thermomechanical simulation, though I appreciate the logistical difficulty of getting the material evidence to the earth's surface in the case of divergent plates; the most relevant materials are heading in the wrong direction. Also a bit concerned by the dismissal without much explanation of late palaeozoic, early mesozoic structures that didn't fit the pattern as well as the later mesozoic to early cenozoic structures the study focused on.

Having said that there are a pair of suspicious large low-shear-velocity zones sat close to the core mantle boundary: the African and Pacific LLSVZs. Some claim these to be Theia remnants.

Hey! Don't jump to conclusions! Just to throw something into the mix, how about mantle delamination at constructive plate margins. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01473-7#:~ This model for creation of the Tibetan plateau has been kicking around for decades, but along with the OP it reinforce the role of delamination as a global phenomenon. So uplands aren't necessarily evidence of large scale granite emplacement.

Only if you believe the advertising slogans of the authoritarian right. The irony is quite clear in the Auschwitz welcome: "Arbeit macht Frei"

Although the wattless current does no work, it still has to be accommodated in the supply manifesting in larger cross-section conductors and larger generator kVA demand. Getting the kVA back closer to the kW load via a capacitor bank can yield substantial savings.

And there's no possible justification for that? Retired IT manager has a bash at terraforming tropical paradise. What could possibly go wrong?

We are in the 21st century. Was no soil analysis performed prior to excavation? Never mind an EIA. Even now when the project seems to have gone tips up, the OP is trying to get free advice off the internet rather than employ the professional services that should have been on board before shovel touched dirt. The pH problem was foreseeable. It doesn't surprise me that this project is based in Thailand. It has a very familiar ring to it. I've seen many similar scenarios over the years here in Nigeria.

RFO is a real slow burn fuel so they're probably close to isothermal combustion through most of the power stroke. Hence they can achieve the high cylinder pressures and consequent high torque output without incurring extreme combustion temperatures. Similar to how power stations limit NOx with staged combustion.

This is consistent with your base sediment clay being carbonate rich - ie a marl, as mentioned above. And your solution is to... change the environment? No qualms about social responsibility when it conflicts with short-term commercial interest?

You get very similar figures for gas turbines too (their inlet compressors typically run also at 25 bara). Whatever the technology, it's always limited by the available metallurgy.

Just some ballpark figures to give an indication how deep this rabbit hole goes: For a 10:1 (isentropic) compression ratio of inlet air @ 300 K, 100 kPa, compression stroke ends at 754 K, 2,511 kPa. (~ 350 psig) Theoretical adiabatic, isochoric, stoichiometric flame temperature of isooctane ~ 2,900 +754 - 300 ~ 3,354 K By Pressure Law, Peak Theoretical Combustion Pressure = 2,511 * 3,354 / 754 = 11,170 kPa (~1,600 psig) And yet car engines appear able to run for quite a while without the spontaneous catastrophic disassembly such figures may suggest. This observation is consistent with actual instantaneous P,T values not exceeding 50% of the above by very much.

Quite. And 'liberating' vast quantities of sequestered carbon dioxide in the attempt.

It's similar to the pH range of Malham Tarn, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a national nature reserve in the UK. The pH of lakes is determined not so much by what is in the water (an effect) but by the underlying sediments either of the catchment area or the lake itself. Does the OP proposal consider destruction of eg. a 100 foot thick bed of marl, along with potentially a productive and highly specialised ecosystem?

Indeed. In passing, I find it remarkable how the General Compressibilty Chart can be reasonably accurate for all materials irrespective of their individual peculiarities. I guess it must be dominated by the ratio of intermolecular bonding energy to kinetic energy or similar simple relationship.

Perhaps, but it can have a considerable impact on engineering. Vapours (Tr < 1.0 in attached chart) depart from ideal gas behaviour markedly more so than gases (Tr > 1.0).

In my younger days, CEGB engineers called it 'ot fog.

No, no, yes, and no. Liquid water cannot exist above its critical temperature of 647 K (374 oC) at any pressure. Above that temperature, steam is a gas: below it, a vapour. (The distinction is due to whether or not it is possible for a vapour/liquid equilibrium state to exist at a particular temperature).

Yes, there has to be more distance between the two for the distinction to make sense, doesn't there. Sanity seems to restored when I consider them as extremes of a spectrum with eg. the raccoon at one end and the xanthopan at the other.

You've got me thinking now! If instead of the black and white flowers of daisyworld, we had two species of flower that were simply different and a nectar feeding 'generalist' bird that could feed from either though not particularly efficiently. Would there be an evolutionary advantage in splitting into two closely related species that each were optimised for just one flower species? Would the potential gains in feeding efficiency offset the doubling(?) of the average distance between their preferred flowers? Providing one of the flowers survived a catastrophe, then both the generalist and one of the specialists might too. Both the energy budget and survivabilty factors are not as clearcut as I imagined. This case actually blurs the lines between generalist and specialist for me. A group of closely related specialists could simply be viewed as a generalist hedging his bets. Another case of the dangers of making sweeping generalisations in regard to complex systems?

Exactly! Hence my earlier comment: A good point indeed, and yet I have a lingering reservation. High species diversity tends to be associated with highly specialised niche partitioning and complex, often Byzantine levels of species interdependence and coevolution. In times of stress, these tend to be the systems most vulnerable to collapse and they do so quite quickly. I'm not sure they provide that much of a defence. Born survivors tend to have much less fussy lifestyles.

Just a small point. Sickle cell disease is the unfortunate result of inheriting an abnormal B-globin gene from each parent. Having a single sickle cell gene (as in the case of Mrs Seth) confers significant malaria resistance without the symptoms of sickle cell disease, but it does make one a carrier, which is routinely uncovered in blood tests. It's significantly less of a problem now than it used to be.

I think the default condition comprises a moderately stable environment populated by a biota optimally adapted to thrive in those specific environmental conditions. If a genetic or behavioural change occurs in one species such that it starts to significantly alter the conditions in which it thrives, then that seems to be a recipe for evolutionary suicide does it not? As presented, this is a relatively straightforward, self-sustaining mechanism that provides the basics of Gaia without appealing to evolutionary foresight (or new age spiritualism). But... The empirical background came predominantly from the studies of modern (at least, pre-industrial) ecosystems. These in turn have been shaped by a global climate that from the close of the last glaciation 10 kya has until very recently been unusually stable by geological standards. It may well be atypical. We should also point out that it was initialised ~3.5 bya with the development of photosynthesis and advanced gradually raising free oxygen levels from ~1 ppm to ~2% by ~1.9 bya, with the GOE proper occurring over the final half billion years or so of that period. Obviously, we have a fairly coarse-grained perspective on such distant times, and there may well have been a series of lethal pulses in O2 concentration as each stage in the sequence of oxygen reducing buffers reached saturation point in turn. However, the picture we see is one of sustained hostility to life for one third of the planet's existence. This was not an overnight catastrophe like the Chixulub impact. For an immense period of time, this was situation normal (afu). GOE is not an isolated example: plants had another good go at wiping us out when they conquered the land in the Devonian and sent atmospheric O2 levels shooting up to ~30%; the advent of sea floor burrowing destroyed the highly productive seabed bacterial mats of earlier times. I'd make the case that such stability we observe is never more than transitory - the seeds of revolution are always ready in the wings. Indeed, imho they need to be in order to periodically begin anew. It's very tempting to write these off as 'special cases' when they threaten such such a seductive idea as Gaia. But nature is, as someone once said, red in tooth and claw. We idealise and anthropomorphise it at our peril.