Speaker wants 100 watt RMS. Is 40 watt tube OK?

Please correct me if I'm wrong as I am not an expert but I have always felt that that the higher current amps give much better control over the speaker. Damping also plays a critical role. I feel like watt ratings although important are usually a marketing term to ill informed consumer.

Actually no speaker needs more than 20:1 for a damping factor and many need less. If the damping factor is too high the speaker is overdamped and an unnatural phenomena known as 'tight bass' occurs. Many audiophiles like tight bass, but its a coloration.

Is there some law of physics I missed in school? This may be sorta true in some cases, with some amps but it's far from a universal conversion factor. I can think of many circumstances with my own gear collection where this is absolutely not true.

The missing bit is distortion. The reason the tube amp can seem to play louder than its watts suggest is that they have much smoother clipping character- rounding the output waveform when clipping rather than chopping it off as a solid state amp will do. So you may not hear the clipping at first but with a solid state amp you will.

As the tube amp approaches clipping it will generate more higher ordered harmonics. Since the ear uses these harmonics to sense sound pressure, it will sound louder at that point but a sound pressure meter will reveal what is really going on.