Quick set up: this is a comic passage from the novel Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin. One character has assured the other that the lake they have to swim across will be warm because of geo-thermal conditions. He’s wrong. Here’s his explanation:
Except for the last sentence, does this make any kind of sense? If it does, can you translate it for me?
Nearest I can get from that is “hot fluids rise”, and the justification, if it makes any sense at all, is way more complicated than it ought to be. The character who uttered that line is apparently unaware that the purpose of language is to communicate.
Sometimes the purpose of language is to make a joke. :rolleyes:
Sometimes, the joke is that a character is apparently unaware that the purpose of language is to communicate.
See also the “Vulcan Insults” thread in MPSIMS.
the term ‘cohometric’ shows up at only five sites in a google search, and only once through google scholar. That later ref deals with (coho) salmon:
There’s precious little indication that cohometric is anything more than a made up term.
It’s sad that I feel compelled to pick at this. Wading through the wiki and the google and wildass guessing on my part gives the following.
“I know this may sound like an excuse,” he said. "But tensor functions in higher differential topology, [the way changes play out in a three-dimensional material?]
as exemplified by application of the Gauss-Bonnett Theorem [wiki: “The theorem applies in particular to compact [finite] surfaces without boundary.” me: not sure if a lake could be described as a compact surface – maybe the top could be]
to Todd Polynomials, [wiki: a part of the theory in algebraic topology of characteristic classes. (In mathematics, a characteristic class is a way of associating to each principal bundle on a topological space X a cohomology class of X.) me: sounds like the characteristic class is temperature, here]
indicate that cohometric [no cohometric on wiki or google, let alone cohometric axial rotation. Cohomologic, on the other hand, has a wiki: “cohomology is fundamental to modern algebraic topology.” My guess: things that are cohomologic are like each other, topographically.]
axial rotation [water has no axis to rotate around - it can make movement cells, but those aren’t said to have an axis (past classes: limnology & fluid dynamics).
in nonadiabatic [for adiabatic, wiki: In thermodynamics, an adiabatic process or an isocaloric process is a thermodynamic process in which no heat is transferred to or from the working fluid. for non-adiabatic on wiki, they go into quantum chemistry Direct quantum chemistry - Wikipedia , although the phrase could mean thermodynamic processes in which heat is transferred to or from the fluid, which would make sense if it’s heated from below.]
thermal upwelling can, [hot water rises]
by random inference derived from translational equilibrium aggregates, [from http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/translational-equilibrium.htm “In a translational equilibrium all the forces on an object cancel each other out, in the sense that the (vector) sum of all forces is zero, so there is no net force acting on it. All the forces are balanced.” So for an object or volume of water in translational equilibrium, nothing moves. Translational equilibrium aggregates would be a group of, say, volumes of water, that are not moving. How a collection of things that aren’t moving can cause random interference to anything else is beyond me.]
array in obverse transitional order the thermodynamic characteristics [the expected heat profile of the material is reversed]
of a transactional plasma [wiki for plasma: “an ionized gas, the fourth state of matter”, me: not water. And I can’t find “transactional plasma” as a phrase on google, outside of the story.]
undergoing negative entropy conversions." [me: entropy (the measure of disorder in a system) always increases. Negative entropy for a system (an increase in order in a system) is always at a cost of an increase in entropy outside the system.]
OK - so he’s saying: “the expected heat profile has been reversed and I know the names of a couple of algebraic topology equations, so I’m going to throw those out with kind of a floundering hint that the force driving the movement that those equations would describe (assuming that they can be applied to thermal-driven water movement) is caused by the heat transferring to the water (damn, that doesn’t make sense - wave hands and keep going) or to the water standing still and interfering with its own movement and ‘transactional plasma’ sounds cool, so I’ll throw that out (hey, maybe I can get a couple of guys together and make it a band name), and maybe space aliens have reversed entropy so that I can blame them for the heat profile being in this backwards and unstable state.”
At least, that’s my best shot at it.
Sometimes the purpose of language is to obfuscate and pretend to give a reasonable reason why you were dead wrong. That’s what I’m guessing this character is doing.
Yllaria, that was awesome. I particularly enjoyed the reason you gave for editing your post. 
Incidentally, the character is a buffoon – an exquisite little Wile E. Coyote cameo – and I believe the speech is supposed to be hilariously opaque.
Thanks, everyone!
Let’s edit out some of the asides he throws in the middle of the explanation. I’m taking out “as exemplified by application of the Gauss-Bonnett Theorem to Todd Polynomials” and “by random inference derived from translational equilibrium aggregates.”
We are left with the core explanation: “But tensor functions in higher differential topology, … indicate that cohometric axial rotation in nonadiabatic thermal upwelling can, … array in obverse transitional order the thermodynamic characteristics of a transactional plasma undergoing negative entropy conversions.”
“But tensor functions in higher differential topology,” = the way changes play out in a three-dimensional material… (stolen from Yllaria)
“indicate that cohometric axial rotation in nonadiabatic thermal upwelling” = (using wiki article on group cohomology which is “a way to study groups using a sequence of functions”) I’m going to translate this as “measuring a bunch of points in the thermal upwelling (which is transferring heat to another material) and the points happen to be rotating”
“array in obverse transitional order the thermodynamic characteristics” = the expected heat profile of the material is reversed (stolen from Yllaria)
of a transactional plasma = I don’t think this is as scientific as it sounds. I think he is talking about the magma undergoing a transaction with the water, or something like that. The transaction being the exchange of heat, I assume.
undergoing negative entropy conversions = you can get negative entropy and I believe this is talking about the magma having negative entropy as it interacts with something (water?).
So here’s my wild guess about it:
“the way changes play out in a three-dimensional material… indicate that measured rotation in the thermal upwelling may cause the heat profile to be reversed in a plasma (magma?) which is going through a period of negative entropy due to heat exchange with other material.”
And the fun part of that is that it totally and completely does not match the way that water acts when exposed to a bottom heat source. The natural movement of water warmed at the bottom is to rise, spread along the surface, cool, and fall, creating convection cells. If the heat is significant, you can get secondary cells, rotating in the opposite direction, as surface water further from the heat source gets dragged down with the cooling surface water from one of the primary cells.
At all times, the water is warmer at the top, except for the central plume(s) coming up. None of the forces caused by the heating of the water will create a heat profile inversion. It just won’t.
So in order for his polysyllabic topological math to save his butt from being wrong, wrong, wrong, it would have to be applied to some outside force that had nothing to do with water being heated by magma. And he does not posit such an outside source.
I have to ask. Can algebraic topology apply to a volume? Some of the wiki articles seemed to imply that it could, but the math was dense and I’m not familiar enough with the topic to be sure I followed, well, any of it. Or is topology applied to surfaces only?
Algebraic topology can certainly apply to a volume; there’s no restriction to any particular dimension. The term “surface” is usually applied only to 2-dimensional spaces, and this in the context in which the original Gauss–Bonnet theorem (note the spelling) applies, but, as noted at the bottom of its Wikipedia article, it has been generalized to other dimensions as well.
[complete and utter hijack]Oh great, I just downloaded Five Years time (Sun, Sun, Sun,) by Noah and the Whale and it was playing in my head as I read “wrong, wrong, wrong,” and now I’m going to forever sing “sun sun sun” that way 
True, it would just be a classic convection cell. But the more I read it, I think he is speaking only about the heat source (plasma, he calls it). He says “[A bunch of weird crap] can… array in obverse transitional order the thermodynamic characteristics of a transactional plasma.”
Translation, the heat profile of the plasma is flipped, thus the water is not heated.
I think that makes more sense.