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Re:The hairy ball theorem by russell on Friday June 12, 2009 @03:08PM (#655239)
> Note that the eye can be arbitrarily large or small and the magnitude of the wind surrounding it is irrelevant.

Given that the eye can be arbitrarily small, I would accept the statement that the earth would always have at least one circular wind pattern. The paragraph is not talking about just hurricane size.

Re:The hairy ball theorem by pixcavator on Friday June 12, 2009 @03:59PM (#655326)
>the earth would always have at least one circular wind pattern

Not necessarily. There may be two stationary points and all winds blowing from the first point to the second. Nothing circular...

Re:The hairy ball theorem by DougBTX on Friday June 12, 2009 @07:45PM (#655584)
Hopefully that won't last too long, or all the air on the planet will end up at point two! (A constant amount of non-compressible air was assumed in the example.)