THERMAL CONDUCTION BEFORE RELAXATION IN SLOWLY ROTATING FLUIDS

For slowly rotating fluids, we establish the existence of a critical p oint similar to the one found for nonrotating systems. As the fluid ap proaches the critical point, the effective inertial mass of any fluid element decreases, vanishing at that point and changing sign beyond it . This result implies that the first-order perturbative method is not always reliable to study dissipative processes occurring before relaxa tion. Physical consequences that might follow from this effect are com mented on. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.