I’d like to choose up on the subject of gravity, stress, and the floor temperature of the earth, concerning the stress concept of Nikolov and Zeller.
Final time I used to be right here for any prolonged time period, I used to be stumped by the puzzle of the 2 bottles: you probably have two bottles, one with regular ambiance and one with, say, close to vacuum and you set these out within the chilly, then will the temperature throughout the two bottles be the identical? If we are saying ‘sure,’ then that signifies that stress doesn’t have an effect on temperature in any respect. Widespread sense says, ‘sure.’
Nevertheless (and nobody arguing on my facet got here to my rescue– in all probability as a result of they received uninterested in following alongside) the proper reply is ‘no, the 2 bottles wouldn’t have the identical temperature.’ On the time, I went with the commonsense reply and admitted I used to be unsuitable.
I belief everybody at WUWT is aware of why the 2 bottles wouldn’t have the identical temperature, even when the molecules inside them are transferring on the similar precise velocity. If not, stick your hand within the thermosphere and inform us how scorching your hand is.
So, stress (the variety of molecules inside a quantity) issues.
One other factor that’s been bugging the heck out of me is the concept if the ambiance had been of a non-IR-radiating gasoline (say, nitrogen) then the ambiance can be isothermal. No, that will be inconceivable. It is mindless. It’d be inconceivable for the air parcels in any respect ranges of the ambiance to have the identical temperature. Convection would happen.
I feel Nikolov and Zeller are appropriate. I doubt very a lot that the earth’s floor is warmed by back-radiation or any such fiction. In reality, I feel your complete concept of a radiative greenhouse is simply epicycles to help a concept that may be expained far more simply and elegantly by the gravitational mannequin.
And with that, Blissful 4th!
