How do I get out of the coal trap?

Solution 1:

You don't need a tenured scientist for anything. The geyser will be in one of the following states:

• Idle: It is active but currently not emitting stuff
• Active: It is emitting stuff
• Dormant: The geyser is sleeping for a prolonged time

The only thing a tenured scientist will find out is the time span of the geyser being in a dormant state. However, this does not affect the duration of the states.

A geyser will always switch something like this:

(idle > active) x n --> (dormant x m) --> (idle > active) x n

n being the activity cycle length
m being the dormant cycle length