Comment Jane/Lonny Eachus goes Sky Dragon Slayer (Score 1) 708
Don't you see that you threw in this whole "thermal superconductor" schtick without considering what properties a thermal superconductor must actually have? In order to superconduct, it must be the same temperature everywhere, always. The only way this would be even remotely possible were if it were a perfect radiator... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-30]
Superconductors are distinguished from aluminum by internal properties, not radiative surface properties. That's because conduction happens inside materials, whereas radiation is emitted and absorbed on surfaces.
... The only way this would be even remotely possible were if it were a perfect radiator, with emissivity of 1. It would also be a perfect absorber, absorptivity of 1. Regardless of wavelength. So while this might not technically be true, for all practical purposes it is: a thermal superconductor would be completely transparent to all radiation... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-30]
No. As I've explained, emissivity = 1 and absorptivity = 1 is the definition of a blackbody. A completely transparent material would have transmittance = 1 and absorptivity = 0. Blackbodies can't be transparent.
... a thermal superconductor
... has no "thermal mass". So it would have absolutely no effect on anything in this experiment. For practical purposes, it would not exist. Your idea that you can get around this by placing some kind of thin lining on its interior doesn't work. It's still as though it weren't there at all... all you have left for practical purposes is the thin shell, nothing else. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-30]
I've already solved this problem with an aluminum enclosing shell rather than a thermal superconductor shell. Both shells warm the heated plate to ~233.8F.
... That's why I say: no more prevarication. No more beating about the bush. Take Spencer's original challenge, apply Latour's thermodynamic treatment of it, and show where it is wrong. Anything else constitutes failure to back up your claim that Latour is wrong and -- as you have said more than once -- some kind of nutcase. You've had more than 2 years. That is plenty. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-30]
Dr. Spencer's original challenge included the possibility of a fully-enclosing passive plate. And so did Dr. Latour. Note that Dr. Latour never specifies the dimensions of the plates (as Jane began to) before wrongly concluding that T remains 150. This means his incorrect conclusion must apply to all geometries, including a fully-enclosing passive plate. In fact, notice that Dr. Latour explicitly allows for K = 1 and k = 1, which describes a fully-enclosing blackbody passive plate.
So Dr. Latour wrongly claimed that a fully-enclosing passive plate wouldn't warm the heated plate. I've shown that his claim violates conservation of energy. As long as the shell is warmer than the chamber walls (which it is), the net radiative heat loss from the heated plate is reduced. So power in > power out, which means the heated plate either warms or energy isn't conserved. Just like how a bathtub fills up.
Since you just linked to this excellent example, did you notice that MIT solved this problem at the very top and got a completely different answer than Dr. Latour?
Again, note that MIT's final expression reduces to my Eq. 1 for blackbodies, and is consistent with these equations and Eq. 1 in Goodman 1957.