Partial Obliquity in Questions of Retort

The Retort Courteous

Assessment of Control Strategy for 500W Retort

A retort is a steam operated “pressure cooker” which is used in the food industry for sterilization. The 500W retort is a lab-size unit donated to the California State University, Fresno Food Processing Laboratory by the FMC Corporation in the summer of 1998. This retort was developed two decades ago and intended for small batches and versatile food containers such as jars, pouches, cans, and b...

Evolution of Mercury’s obliquity

Mercury has a near-zero obliquity, i.e. its spin axis is nearly perpendicular to its orbital plane. The value of the obliquity must be known precisely in order to constrain the size of the planet’s core within the framework suggested by Peale [Peale, S.J., 1976. Nature 262, 765–766]. Rambaux and Bois [Rambaux, N., Bois, E., 2004. Astron. Astrophys. 413, 381–393] have suggested that Mercury’s ob...

Climate at high-obliquity

The question of climate at high obliquity is raised in the context of both exoplanet studies (e.g. habitability) and paleoclimates studies (evidence for low-latitude glaciation during the Neoproterozoic and the ‘‘Snowball Earth’’ hypothesis). States of high obliquity, /, are distinctive in that, for / P 54!, the poles receive more solar radiation in the annual mean than the equator, opposite to...

Obliquity Tides on Hot Jupiters

Obliquity tides are a potentially important source of heat for extrasolar planets on close-in orbits. Although tidal dissipation will usually reduce the obliquity to zero, a nonzero obliquity can persist if the planet is in a Cassini state, a resonance between spin precession and orbital precession. Obliquity tides might be the cause of the anomalously large size of the transiting planet HD 209...