Syria

I haven’t been commenting on the events in Syria because I don’t actually know what’s going on there. Initially, it appeared that a bunch of jihadists trained by the West broke into Syrian government controlled territory, and they looked like the typical IS characters on Toyota pickup trucks, armed with light weapons; they should have been easily stopped. However, that’s not what happened. Instead, the Syrian government forces retreated and crumbled away without actually opposing the invaders. Whether that is because of incompetence, cowardice, corruption or treason, I don’t know, but militarily speaking they were a non-entity. The terrorists took over the capital, Assad fled and Syria is no more. The Russians did some damage to the terrorists from the air, but since they had absolutely no ground forces to rely on, that did nothing, and they did the right thing by letting go of Syria altogether, because if its own people won’t defend it, why would they?

Israel is already taking advantage and entering border towns.

This entire thing smells of very good intelligence work from Israel and the West – bribe the key people in the Syrian military, spread discontent, use the fact that the Americans captured Syrian oil which made the Syrian government unable to finance the country etc., and then introduce the jihadis they trained in Idlib and other places to take the whole thing over in what, less than a week? That must be a record of some kind, even for the notoriously incompetent Arab armies. The Russians will now likely cut the losses, withdraw from the base they have there, and sigh in collective relief because they are no longer trying to push that rock uphill.

However, this doesn’t look over. Iran now lost a major ally in the region, and I don’t think they will just take it. Without Syria under control, Hezbollah would be exposed and their supply lines compromised, and the position of Israel greatly strengthened. Also, everybody blames Turkey for this, but they now betrayed Iran and Russia and thus lost the BRICS option that would allow them to gain independence from America and NATO. Basically, I don’t see Turkey as a winner here, despite the appearance. The only winners are Israel, America and presumably the UK; Turkey lost the option of strategic independence, Iran lost a strategically important ally, Russia lost its only foothold in the Middle East, but for Russia this was merely an unsustainable adventure with strained supply lines, that tried to fight fate and keep the incompetent Assad government and his rotten and cowardly army in place. This was a major win for America – they basically financed the destruction of Syria with profits from Syrian oil alone, they had no losses, they helped Israel, strategically harmed Iran, and made Russia look foolish.

Of all the aforementioned players, I think Iran is the least likely to just take the loss and shrug. Unlike the Russians, they have a very important stake in the region and they might decide that it’s worth it to go all-in and try to bring things back under control. In any case, this doesn’t look over. We now have multiple Arab countries without normal governments and unable to control their own territory, which makes them non-countries, I guess. Israel, as a major beneficiary of this, will feel encouraged, and will probably want to add Iran to this list.

Ukraine didn’t benefit from this at all, since the Russians refused to take the focus from what matters the most, and were not really distracted from destroying them. Their front line is crumbling and we’re approaching the point where the Russians decide how much of Ukraine they want to take, or, in other words, how much of Ukraine will they allow to become a hornet’s nest in their back yard, since the NATO countries are already talking about who will send how many occupying forces (aka. “peace keepers”) there. The Russians are not likely to allow this, but on the other hand they like the option of escalating the war even less, and they have to stop somewhere.

Misunderstood signals

I just finished watching Tucker Carlson’s interview with Sergei Lavrov.

The impression I’m getting is similar to that of a cat or a bear “talking” to a dog. The way Lavrov is talking will communicate nothing to the Americans. They are adrenaline addicts, brought up on fast and hysterical ads and movies. Lavrov’s calm and intellectual approach will make them fall asleep. They are unable to think in full sentences, let alone paragraphs or pages of condensed text. They need it summarised into an emotion-charged sound-bite.

What Lavrov said was that the American belief in the possibility of a limited nuclear war that’s taking place in Europe and not involving America is dangerous and invites catastrophe.

What the Americans will hear is “the Russians are boring, they just talk and don’t have the guts to do anything”.

Lavrov speaks reasonably good English, but he doesn’t speak American. Translated to American, what he said should sound like: “If the nukes start flying, we will make absolutely sure that everything we’ve got hits America first, in order to ensure there’s no America left. We will make absolutely certain that they don’t survive this. Only after all of them are either dead or wishing they were, will we deal with their European poodles. There is absolutely no option where this goes nuclear and America survives in any shape or form”.

Discrepancy

Biden allows American missiles to be launched into Russia proper and thus meets the conditions for war with Russia.

Trump is completely silent.

Biden pardons his money laundering son.

Trump immediately protests.

I don’t know about you, but I would take this as a sign that one of those was pre-arranged between the two.

Physics

When the Russians initially hit Yuzhmash with the “Hazel” MIRV impactors, I think the NATO guys went there to inspect the debris, a standard measure when some new weapon is suspected to have been used. I think their first reaction was professional and “business as usual”. By now, I think they are all holding their heads in shock.

You see, what happened there is something that would not be intuitive to non-physicists. People normally imagine physical matter behaving in certain ways, which is why I periodically hear the question “why are all the craters on the Moon round and not elliptical, when one would expect most impacts to happen at oblique angles?” Well, you see, what happens at such high-velocity impacts, is well outside of normal human experience. We expect there to be a great deal of a difference between rock and water, and we don’t intuitively think in terms of energies that far exceed the energy of the molecular bonds, but when an asteroid strikes an object, what actually happens is that the kinetic energy of the object converts into thermal energy, which is a fancy way of saying that both the object and the immediate impact zone are either liquefied or evaporated, depending on the energy level they receive and whether it’s water ice, rock or iron. But, basically, both the impactor and the impact zone turn to a liquid that spherically explodes outwards and sprays liquid rock, glass, water vapour, various gases and molten metal outwards:

So, the round crater isn’t from the meteorite. The meteorite was liquefied/evaporated on impact, together with the impact zone. The crater was from the liquid explosively propelled outwards from the area, the way steam would disintegrate a failed pressure cooker.

The impact velocity of the meteors striking Earth is around 12 km/s. This is around 3-4 times faster than the impact velocity of the “Hazel” penetrators. I heard that the temperature of the impactors before they hit was around 3000°C. This means that they are made from either Tungsten, or some kind of a Tungsten alloy. This means they are very dense, and have greater kinetic energy and structural integrity than an asteroid impacting at this velocity, and they are also shaped like needles, which would create greater pressure on the ground, causing deeper penetration. I don’t know how deep they went, but I would expect 10-50m. On the surface level, I would expect lots of percussive damage to the concrete structures, but not much energy was transferred yet. As the impactor goes deeper, it grows hotter, as some kinetic energy is converted into heat. At a certain critical point, the force required to penetrate deeper becomes greater than the cohesive forces within the impactor, and its entire remaining kinetic energy is converted to heat, adding to the initial 3000°C. Let’s say that the melting point of concrete is the highest melting point of its compounds, which is limestone at 2570°C and quartz at 1650°C. This means that, at the end of the road for each Tungsten impactor there would be a spherical cavity caused by the explosion of overheated materials, consisting of various vapours, molten rock, molten glass and molten Tungsten, which probably remained hot for days after the impact. That stuff wasn’t just pierced and shredded. No, the deepest levels of the structure were turned into something similar to the Trinitite formed after the Trinity nuclear explosion in New Mexico, or tektites that shower the Earth thousands of kilometers across with globules of molten glass after an asteroid strike.

So, those inspectors are holding their heads there in shock, because they did the math and concluded that this would turn their deepest command bunkers into a lake of fire and brimstone. In some ways, this is worse than a nuclear bomb, because it’s so deep, so precise, and destruction is total.