Twenty-nine theories · each with its instrument · not peer reviewed
Every previous volume asserted claims without saying how to check them. This one attaches each theory to the capability that makes it falsifiable — a new instrument, a new dataset, a new kind of resolution — and names what the capability changed.
A cell passing from one state to another must traverse intermediate states whose number is set by the ratio of transition time to transcriptional response time, so fast transitions appear as jumps only because the intermediates are rare.
A protein's functional range of motion is set by the ratio of thermal energy to the stiffness of its slowest mode, so two proteins with identical ground-state structures can have very different accessible ensembles.
The phenotypic effect of a structural variant is set by the ratio of disrupted regulatory sequence to the number of genes it disturbs, so a large inversion can be harmless while a small deletion is severe.
A cell's identity is set by the ratio of signals from its immediate neighbours to signals from the tissue average, so two cells with identical genomes differ because of who is next to them.
Physiological collapse is preceded by a rise in the variance of resting signals rather than by a change in their mean, so the warning lies in variability.
How a cell routes carbon is set by the ratio of enzyme capacity to substrate supply at each branch, not by the expression of the enzymes, so transcript abundance mispredicts flux.
The absence of compact objects between roughly two and five solar masses is set by the ratio of explosion energy to envelope binding energy, so the gap is a physical boundary rather than an observational artefact.
A biosphere is detectable as a ratio of incompatible gases rather than as any single molecule, so oxygen alone proves little while oxygen with methane proves a source.
The density of the circumgalactic medium is set by the ratio of dispersion measure to path length through the halo, so fast radio bursts passing through halos measure gas that emission surveys cannot see.
The onset of a core-collapse supernova is set by the ratio of neutrino diffusion time to collapse time, so the neutrino burst precedes the optical signal by hours and reports the progenitor's structure.
The gravitational potential difference between two points is set by the ratio of their clock rates, so elevation can be measured by comparing clocks rather than by levelling.
Ultralight dark matter would appear as an oscillating field rather than as particles, with a coherence time set by the ratio of its mass to its velocity dispersion.
Forecast error growth rate is set by the ratio of strain rate to error saturation, so errors amplify fastest in deformation zones rather than in the most unstable regions overall.
Whether a land change is anthropogenic is set by the ratio of the change to the variability of the same pixel under climate alone, so attribution is a signal-to-noise problem at the pixel rather than a judgement at the region.
Community turnover is set by the ratio of species replacement rate to detection probability, so eDNA detects replacement long before any species is lost.
The functional integrity of a habitat is set by the ratio of acoustic diversity to acoustic evenness, so a degraded site can be as loud as an intact one but not as structured.
Above-ground carbon is set by the ratio of canopy height to crown packing rather than by area, so two forests of equal extent can differ several-fold.
Habitat selection is set by the ratio of step length to the scale at which resources change, so an animal appears selective or indifferent depending only on the sampling interval.
Microbiome stability is set by the ratio of strain replacement rate to species persistence, so a community can look stable at species level while turning over completely beneath it.
An organoid self-organises into patterned tissue only within a window of the ratio of its size to the length scale of its signalling, so too small and too large both fail.
Connection probability between two neurons is set by the ratio of wiring cost to functional benefit, so short-range connections are over-represented relative to their information value.
The information a population carries about a stimulus is set by the ratio of correlated to independent noise, so adding neurons helps only while their noise remains partly independent.
Whether a neuron drives a behaviour is set by the ratio of its activation time to the integration window of the downstream circuit, so the same cell can be causal or irrelevant depending on when it fires.
Whether an organelle contact site signals is set by the ratio of membrane apposition to diffusion distance, so a contact that looks structural may be functionally silent.
A mechanosensitive protein responds to force only above a threshold set by the ratio of its unfolding energy to the loading rate, so the same cell can be sensitive or blind depending on how fast the force is applied.
Metabolite concentrations in tissue vary over tens of micrometres, so bulk assays report a value that exists nowhere in the sample.
Whether an allele was under selection is set by the ratio of its frequency change to the change expected under drift, so a small consistent change can be stronger evidence than a large ambiguous one.
The timing of a surface event is set directly by the ratio of accumulated cosmogenic nuclide to production rate, so a date comes from the surface rather than from a stratigraphic correlation.
The resolvable time between two events is set by the ratio of analytical precision to decay constant, so a long-lived isotope can date old rocks precisely and recent ones not at all.
Twenty-four volumes asserted claims and left the checking to the reader. This one attaches each theory to the capability that makes it falsifiable, and says what that capability changed. A claim that no instrument can test is not a theory, it is a sentence.
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Publication records: source hashes · original README · original manifest · additive publication note