SPACE SPEEDS SCHMACE SPEEDS

Meet Wolfgang the Cat. He is at rest. How is it that Wolfgang understands that he lives in an inertial world, while supposedly intelligent Physicists cannot grasp that simple concept? This question is tied closely to the BIG ISSUE--the title of this location: The Real Coriolis Mystery.

The REAL MYSTERY is how the nonsense known as the Coriolis Effect has taken root and survived for so long --within a group so proud of their intelligence, their skepticism, their probing, searching, their analytical prowess? It is "The Emperor's New Clothes" in spades.

NEWS FLASH!! Earth is an inertial environment. Newton's First Law is alive and well here, with one minor exception. When we say that objects in horizontal motion along earth's surface tend to remain in motion, and along a straight line, we don't mean that literally. The nature of horizontal earth-surface motion is to follow a geodesic line. But the natural line is straight in the normal, plane geometry sense of the word.

The Coriolis Effect, of course, is founded on the hypothesis that Earth, to a limited extent, is a
non-inertial world. Which is a corruption of an astronomical fact--that different Earth latitudes
move through space at different linear velocities (because Earth is a moving sphere).

NEWS FLASH!! A latitude's "space speed" has NOTHING to do with the Earth-physics of motion. I just invented that term. I recommend that all physicists be required to study that term: EARTH-PHYSICS. Maybe that would help physicists remember that the rules for space travel and Earth travel are different.

Earth's planetary motions (annual solar orbit and daily rotation) are space motions. Those motions do not represent the expression of energy. Space is a non-inertial environment.

An inertial environment is one where motion must be bought with energy. Earth's gravitational field constitutes an inertial environment. Space doesn't.

The different space speeds of different Earth latitudes are relevant only in the environment of space (space-physics).

The different space speeds of different Earth latitudes are irrelevant to the inertial environment of Earth (Earth-physics).

The Earth-physics value of any and all Earthly space speeds is zero--nil--nada.

The engine which runs the Coriolis Effect is a corruption, a perversion, a hoax--the hypothetical Earth-physics "application" of a Space-physics phenomenon.

Wolfgang the Cat gets it. Why can't a physicist?

STILLNESS

How would
Coriolis
explain
STILLNESS?







If you fill a glass with water and set it on a table in your home, the natural behavior of the water will be a state of stillness.
If you fill a glass with water and place it on a moving train, the water will be disturbed. The glass is being carried along by the train, and the water is being corraled by the glass.
NOTHING being carried along on the train is actually AT REST.

Coriolis dealt with this pesky detail by ignoring it. Part of his conjuring trick was to state that the ONLY effects of different space speeds of different locations would ONLY be from very long range events along ONLY north or south azimuths. Sounds an awful lot like 'The Emperor's New Clothes' , doesn't it?

YES, IT IS ROCKET SCIENCE, ACTUALLY

ONE of the most
popular 'applications'
for Coriolis is
in ballistics.



Holy Moses! Give me a break! Space Speeds (rotation-derived linear velocities of specific geographic locations) are not, never have been, and never will be a part of the PHYSICS of Earth-surface motion.

If you fire the biggest ICBM you can imagine on a due North azimuth, Coriolis hypothesized that Earth's rotation would cause the trajectory to curve, relative to fixed geographical points. Similarly, many otherwise sane and sober Physicists assure us that Earth's eastward rotation must be included in calculating the ballistics of launching rockets into Earth orbit. Horse manure.

Orbit is achieved by attaining sufficient horizontal velocity to escape the gravitational force of the gravitational field we fondly refer to as 'Earth'. It is PHYSICALLY irrelevant from what latitude you launch, or along what azimuth. Any geodesic will do as well as any other. It's all about the horizontal velocity. And between standing still and reaching that orbit velocity, your rocket will continue to faithfully rotate, every second, every meter, as every well behaved particle of any gravitational field will, exactly in synch with its gravitational field.

Physics and Coriolis ought never be mentioned on the same page.

Big Blow Torch

The sun
is like
a big
blow torch
aimed at
Earth's
equator.

The 'space speed' of a given Earthly geographical point has NO PHYSICAL IMPORT, in and of itself. But since the energy which radiates out from the Sun is the major factor in the behavior of Earth's atmosphere, and since Earth rotates relative to the Sun, that rotation has definite (but complex) physical ramifications as far as Earth's weather.
Space is very cold. Sun is very hot. If you turned the Sun out, Earth would quickly become a big round rotating ice cube, with no wind, no rain, no tornados, no hurricanes, no ocean waves or currents. The Sun is like a big blow torch aimed at a Earth's Equator, and making one full circle per day. Which plays hell with our atmosphere.

Stand on the shoulder beside your local interstate highway. When a big truck goes
roaring by, the wind gusts will blow you off your feet. That's pretty similar to the effect the radiant heat from the Sun has on an otherwise still and ice-cold Earth.

All of those phenomena attributed to the 'Coriolis Weather Effect' are actually just roadside wind gusts from that big truck we call our Sun, as it goes roaring around Earth every day, headed West.

Train of Thought

Nowhere in the encyclopedias or Physics textbooks will you find a realistic MODEL for the kind of Earth Coriolis was selling.
The closest thing is that pathetic, worthless 'rotating disk.

Coriolis' failure to include a cogent MODEL for his 'world' has no doubt been a key factor in the hoax going unexposed for all these years.

Could you, if pressed, produce a working model to illustrate Corilois' perception of rotating Earth?

How about this: Picture an Earth covered with train tracks running parallel to the Equator. Every track is completely covered with its own train. They all run Eastward. Each train completes one 'run' (360 degrees) every 24 hours. Thus they have a common angular velocity around a common axis. But no two train tracks in the same hemisphere have the same length. Which means that no two trains have the same LINEAR VELOCITY. The closer to the Equator, the longer the track. The longer the track, the greater the LINEAR VELOCITY.
So you could lay a plank due north or due south from any given train to any other--and the north-south alignment of the plank would be unchanged by the movement of the trains.
But if you rolled a ball along that plank, it would roll off. Doesn't this accurately represent Coriolis' world view? Yes. Is it a fair representation of the PHYSICS of Earth? No.

In Earth: If you take a perfectly round ball and drop it straight down onto a perfectly flat surface, it will bounce straight back up. Always.
But on our model train: A bouncing ball will migrate in a direction exactly opposite to the direction the train is moving. The higher it bounces, the more noticeable the migration would be. If you were in a closed train car you could calculate both the direction and the linear velocity of the train you were on, based on loss of momentum of a thrown or bounced or rolled ball.

Which illustrates the fundamental flaw in Coriolis' thinking. The Coriolis Effect is based on the different rotation-derived linear velocities of different geographical points (each latitude has its own special eastward linear velocity). But in the real Earth, those different linear velocities have absolutely NO PHYSICAL RAMIFICATIONS. They accelerate nothing. Inside that rotating gravitational field, the rotation might as well not occur. Seattle's 'space speed' has no physical effect on motion (or stillness) in Seattle.

FOUCAULT--UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR

How can I trick you into THINKING about something? I wish I knew. All I can do is keep trying.
If I had been exposed to Coriolis as a young student I am fairly sure I wouldn't be writing this now. I would probably have swallowed it, as one other bit of knowledge one was expected to absorb--like you did. It would have been like meeting someone at a family reunion and automatically accepting him as family. But my formal education had long since ended before I decided I wanted to really get to know Coriolis. So my perspective was rather different than it would have been as a teen-ager.
I was about 50 years old when my Coriolis quest began.
I had confidence in my own mind--my ability to reason. Back in Oklahoma,as a high school senior, I had won the most prestigious academic scholarship in the state. 4 years later, I had made a 726 on the LSAT.
My wife and daughter and I visited Washington about twenty years ago, including the basic whirlwind tour of the Smithsonian Museums. I was fascinated by the Foucault Pendulum exhibit. For some reason that pendulum got itself filed away with all the other unfinished projects in my cluttered mental basement. My favorite puzzles are the tough ones. When I find a NY Times crossword that I can't just sail through, it's like finding treasure. If I ever get 'stumped' I consider that a temporary condition. I save those puzzles and go back to them. I guess that same quirk is what made me file that pendulum away, and then drag it out a few years later. I resolved to work my way through that pendulum, the way Click & Clack work through a car malfunction. An old friend of mine climbed Mt. Ranier a while back. Glaciers. Snow storms. Serious danger. The whole bit. I thought to myself, " he's nuts".

But then I tackle a hugely complex Physics problem, investing thousands of hours and most of my spare energy, year after year, in something that to most people (such as my family) would seem just as nutty--if not moreso--as amateur mountain climbing. Go figure.

I was after that deep satisfaction you experience when you successfully work out an especially tough NY Times crossword. When you finally untangle all of last year's strings of Christmas lights. When you work and tinker and slave on an old car and then turn the key and WOW!--the engine starts and keeps running and purrs and throbs. That's the feeling I was after. But there was no such happy ending to be found in the world of Coriolis and Foucault. To understand them is to find utter disappointment--because they are frauds.

If you set out to understand Foucault's Pendulum, you will be sent down the hall to visit Coriolis.
You will soon find that Coriolis proves Foucault, and at the same time that Foucault proves Coriolis. It's all quite circular--and specious--by nature.

There is a helluva difference between the math and the physics of Coriolis. If you can't see the distinction, then you're wasting your time here--and you'll never get the point.

Coriolis declared that since Earth is known to rotate, it is proper to regard Earth-surface motion as occurring against the backdrop of a (very large) rotating frame of reference. His proofs were all hypothetical, but were accepted, nonetheless. Foucault found that a spherical pendulum ambulates. He married that phenomenon with the Coriolis hypothesis, and the world bought it:
the ambulating pendulum was taken as forensic evidence of the efficacy of the Coriolis hypothesis. Horse manure.

What Foucault's Pendulum proves is that a spherical pendulum does dot vibrate in a plane. No more. No less. The contrivances Foucault performed to "eliminate any deflecting mechanical influence on the vibration of the pendulum's bob" were impressive. Impressive enough to take the whole world in. But it was all just an elaborate conjurer's trick. Just a show. Isn't the simplest explanation supposed to be best? Well: A truly spherical pendulum does not vibrate in a plane. So the whole premise of Foucault's 'experiment' is faulty. It has nothing to do with anybody's frame of reference.

Furthermore, Coriolis' model of Earth as rotating frame of reference is totally inapplicable to Earth-surface motion. Earth is a spherical (aren't they all?) gravitational field which sails spinning through space. If a particle belongs to that gravitational field, then by essence it sails and spins along with the field. That sailing and spinning are an integral part of the very being (mass) of that particle. There is only one way around that physical fact--and that is to escape from the gravitational field (something we call attaining orbit velocity). It is ONLY when moving at (or above) orbit velocity that an Earth particle may properly regard Earth's rotating surface as an accelerator. Any particle moving at lesser velocities continues--by its very nature-- to rotate Eastward at a rate of 360 degrees per day. THAT is the proper frame of reference for the physics of Earth-surface motion. Earth--and every one of her particles--rotate Eastward at the rate of 360 degrees per day. Which sounds like the classic definition of rotation: An object is said to be in rotation if all of its particles circle a common axis at a common angular velicity.

So: the Physics lesson from Foucault's Pendulum is that spherical pendula roam. And the true
Physics lesson from Coriolis' rotating frame of reference is NIL. The physical value of Earth's rotation upon spherical pendula, weather, artillery, missiles and turtles is NIL. The mathematical value of the Coriolis Effect on any sub-orbital Earth-surface motion is, always has been and always will be: NIL.

The Real Mystery

Instead of preening and smirking about how smart they were, Coriolis and his buddies would have been better served by acknowledging that maybe--just maybe--they weren't so much smarter than their scientific predecessors after all. If Galileo and Newton and Copernicus couldn't observe manifestations of Earth's rotation in Earth herself, maybe--just maybe--those manifestations were simply not to be found. What's so impossible about that idea?

Question: Why, after hurtling through space at great speeds for millions of years are planets still spherical? Why is there no centripetal--or any other rotational forces-- at play?
Answer: Because: while all known gravitational fields are in constant motion through space, those motions do not accelerate, influence, alter or effect any particles belonging to said gravitational fields.
What is a planet but a Gravitational Field? And can any individual particle belong to a Gravitational Field & yet not share in each and every planetary motion of the Field? No.
When a NASA shuttle leaves Earth and heads out, say, to the Moon, a major, fundamental change takes place. Earth-surface motion is entirely different than space travel. One involves expenditure of energy, one doesn't.
Earth's planetary motions (chiefly solar orbit and daily rotation) do not involve any expenditure of energy, no application of force. I doubt if we will ever know whether Coriolis' use of that so-called analogy of the rotating disk was a stroke of evil genius or simply blind-ass luck. Either way--there's no viable excuse for people like you letting him get away with the crime--FOR 170 YEARS!
Suggestion: pull down your dusty old Scientific Encyclopedia off the shelf and re-read about the 'Coriolis Effect'. Note how it can't be explained without that 'rotating disk'. Now then: after 170 years, do you think it's possible to wonder whether that rotating disk is actually analogous to rotating Earth?
Well, it isn't. Not even close. The fundamental difference is the involvement of Energy. As stated: Earth's planetary motions do not involve energy. They are perpetual motion phenomena (something we call 'space travel'.) But if you read about Coriolis in your encyclopedia, and follow along with the helpful illustration of the 'rotating disk', you'll see that the disk is very much a creature of expenditure of energy. The longer a particle's radius, the more momentum, which means more energy. Which is so unlike Earth-surface motion it stinks.
Which ought to make us all smack ourselves in the head and scream, "So what the heck does that disk have to do with Earth?"
Answer: "Not a cotton pickin' thing!"

It started innocently enough with a visit to the Smithsonian Museum around 1986. The Foucalt Pendulum changed my life.  

The Beginning

How many card-carrying physicists remember WHY Coriolis introduced his famous theory relating to Earth's rotation, 170 years ago?

In those days, the way the solar system works was still very much in doubt. The astronomical proof of the heliocentric nature of the system had just recently gained wide acceptance. Those few who saw and understood the proof were awfully excited about it--and were awfully proud of themselves. This led directly to a belief among the intelligentsia that-- if you were smart enough--you could find proof of Earth's rotation in Earth herself--WITHOUT RESORT TO ASTRONOMICAL MEANS. The race was on! It was an intellectual footrace. To the winner would go laurel wreaths, fame, wealth, prestige--immortality. Enter Coriolis. This is the context. This was where Coriolis and his contemporaries were coming from. (In other words, they really convinced themselves that: "Dumb old Galileo had to use the stars to see that Earth rotates. We're smarter than that. Smarter than Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Archimedes--all those old dudes. As modern brains, we can make Earth give up the secret of her rotation. We're hot stuff.")

Maybe this atmosphere--this bubbling mixture of intellectual and personal ambition--helps explain the early acceptance of the Coriolis Effect as good science. But it hardly excuses it.

Coriolis was an idiot. Correction. He was either an idiot or an out-and-out con man.