On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 09:02:04PM +0000, Anthony Jackson wrote:
> Any simple calculation that shows a factor of 2 drop in temperature
> in constant time is simply wrong

Yes; given a radiative cooling model, the temperature should drop like
t^(-1/3), which is the reciprocal of the cube root rather than the
suggested exponential decay.  The difference in human terms is pretty
negligible though - anything below 230 K or so means death of
essentially the whole biosphere, while the differences in the cooling
model only become important below about 200 K.

Still, I'm somewhat surprised that an astrophysicist studying
prestellar nebulae would use anything like Newton's cooling model even
for a website question in the "beginner" category.

- Tim