Dissipated Compacta ∗

The dissipated spaces form a class of compacta which contains both the scattered compacta and the compact LOTSes (linearly ordered topological spaces), and a number of theorems true for these latter two classes are true more generally for the dissipated spaces. For example, every regular Borel measure on a dissipated space is separable. A product of two compact LOTSes is usually not dissipated, but it may satisfy a weakening of that property. In fact, the degree of dissipation of a space can be used to distinguish topologically a product of n LOTSes from a product of m LOTSes.