StringJunky

All the torch needs to do is excite a single rod on the retina; that's all the image of a star is in our vision. Apparently, we can be aware a single photon has been emitted, if not actually see it because it's too brief in duration.

I wouldn't have thought of it if you hadn't asked the question and probed intelligently, as you have. I think this is what good discussion is about with hard problems like this one, exploring and critiquing each point with a mutual goal of understanding and not just trying to win empty debating points against each other that don't lead to further personal enlightenment. Thanks to you and Eise I've learnt a fair bit more on this subject as well. Edited to add.

It seems like semantics to me but can you differentiate between expansion and space being created?

I've just read there's one thing you can't fake, if the fossil is an artful inclusion, is that, during the natural encapsulation, the animal will release gases and these will be arrayed and entombed around it. Likely a microscope job and a skilled eye but it would be extremely difficult to fake that AND pass the other tests, i would think.

Asking a question as a thread starter when in fact you have your own idea to push is disingenuous, is it not?

Sounds like you've already made your mind up..

I've got a programmable LED torch but it wasn't within the OP's budget though.

The fact that we can lose parts of conscious experience is evidence that it is not fundamental and, thus, actually emerges from several functions of the brain. If it was fundamental i.e. indivisible, it would be all or nothing.

Wouldn't a decent LED torch and a long enough tube, slightly wider than the torch to restrict the spread, do the job? Pulse the light so it's identifiable. A ship's navigation light is 90 lumens or candelas and can be seen at 6 miles, so I don't think you would need that bright an LED torch.

...In a market! Everything lies before our eyes, if only we could see it. How many fabulous things do naive people see and not notice, like the amber traders. "You, can have this cheap, there's a bit of dirt and mucky old feather in there."

It's a hard thing for me to to describe, but space is no-thing so it can't pass through it, although it could be interpreted as passing through it; I'm assuming an impermeable membrane. The expanding balloon will just displace the existing volume that is outside of it and add volume inside of it. You are actually asking a practically impossible question but I'm going along with the scenario I think you are trying to convey. Basically, I'm imagining a balloon self-expanding in a vacuum. Is that right?

Space is not substantive, it is just volume, so the balloon expands with no effect on space or space on the balloon. I'm ignoring molecules and pressure.

Wow! It's amazing that something so fragile has survived such a passage of time. .

The operative word in that definition is 'firm'. This does not equal 'no evidence'. The boundary a speculation must meet is set in the rules: It's a reasonable bar to jump in my opinion.

"We are gathered here today....."

It'll be tied in with memory.

Actually, Newton would have agreed since action of gravity is assumed to be instant in his theories. Einstein's your Nemesis in this case.

I never meant malicious. Quite the contrary.

Is it beyond the realms of possibility she's playing him along for reasons only known to herself?

For some, it is be hated than ignored.

If it walks like a duck... As soon as I see a question asking about genetic differences between "black/coloured" and "white" people I smell a rat because the very act of signifying groups specifically by colour, rather than country or continent, reveals their agenda. If I asked a question of this nature I would be country or continent specific.

Probably that it contains a minimum number of live bacteria per unit.

No energy is lost. The travelling stellar ejecta is still part of the universe's energy count; it is still conserved.

Yes, it is a prebiotic. Resistant starch is another form.. Artichokes, some cereals and some veg have fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) which are famous for gas production; it is more rapidly metabolised by gut bacteria. Live yoghurt is both prebiotic and probiotic. i chose arabic gum because it typically has 85% of the GOS in it and produces less gas to the point, after a few weeks, that I don't notice. It also seems to have specificity for increasing Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria without also significantly increasing the pathogen population.

After reading about the low commensal-type bacteria survival through the gut via the stomach, I figured it makes more sense to provide the nutrients to the existing population unless there is an actual serious deficit of bacteria, say, from using antibiotics. I use galacto-oligosaccharides in the form of arabic gum. This nutrient is more slowly metabolised, producing gas at a slower rate. My initiative for this exercise was having an adenomatous polyp which may have been caused by my lousy diet. I read that using glycerol in the media helps labs store bacterial samples down to -80oC.