[removed]

Right, found this myself after a quick Google search, correct me if I'm wrong. It's not the density or temperature of the plasma that really affect transparency, rather, it's the fact that this plasma is opaque only because there exist photons of high enough energy to rip apart nuclei and electrons again (the electrons can then scatter incoming photons galore). As the expansion of the universe redshifts the photons, at a certain point there will be no photons of sufficient energy to ionise atoms, hence simultaneity.

Follow up question: assuming we're talking about a Boltzmann distribution, at what timescales do we expect to go from e.g. 1% to 99% of photons falling below ionisation energy?

[removed]

How simultaneously did the universe go from opaque to transparent? I'd imagine that the different CMB temperatures correspond to different densities and therefore different temperatures, so is "at the same time" just more or less the same time on a cosmic scale?

Are these scales proportional such that we need to resolve the CMB to a scaled one million times smaller to see changes in a lifetime? Can the CMB even be resolved to a scale that small?

[removed]

While movement is expected in principle, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is static over human time scales.

The light comprising the CMB last scattered at the same time everywhere, when the universe was about 370000 years old. The CMB that we see consists of the light that is just now reaching us. As time goes on, light from more and more distant regions is able to reach us. In this way, the CMB depicts a spherical slice of the 370000-year-old universe (the "last scattering surface") at an ever increasing distance as time goes on.

Over what time scale should we expect to see the CMB change, then? The smallest scales we can resolve, currently, are about 0.07 degrees on the sky, which corresponds to about 50000 light years (15 kpc) at the distance of the CMB. (This is actually remarkably small due to the angular diameter turnover!)

For a 50000-light-year structure, light from the far end takes 50000 years longer to reach us than light from the near end. Does this mean that we should expect CMB temperature fluctuations on those scales to change in about 50000 years? Well not quite. The CMB is redshifted by a factor of 1100, which means it's time dilated by the same factor. So we expect fluctuations on the (currently) smallest resolved scales to change over a (1100 times longer) time scale of about 55 million years.

[removed]

Radiation is photons or waves, glass is matter. How could radiation cavitate?

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

Physical things do physical things. Radiation radiates and is disqualified from the question.

An opera singer breaking glass isn't due to any sort of "cavitation" phenomenon, that happens because of a cascading resonance phenomenon (or termed in a way that relates to EM radiation, constructive wave interference)

[removed]

No. The tests generally use antibodies to test for your antibodies. The only antigen would come from you. And as noted by others, even if the test did contain antigen, it would 1) likely not be infectious on its own and 2) not enter your body.

The type of test you’re thinking of is a lateral flow immunoassay or dipstick test. They perform a type of test (assay in fancy scientist speak) called a sandwich assay. The strip is prepared with three things:

1. a loading pad that includes an antibody which binds to the target analyte (the thing you are testing for). We will call this antibody A. For the type of test you describe, an antibody test for HIV, the analyte is human anti-HIV antibodies. The Antibody-A’s are bound to something that generates a visible color, often a metal particle such as gold.
2. A test line, which is a line we’ve drawn across the strip and chemically glued another set of Antiboy-A’s down so they are stuck to the strip
3. A control line which has a second type of antibody (Antibody-B) which will bind to Antibody-A

When we add a sample to the loading pad, it will start flowing down the strip. If analyte is present it will bind the loose Antibody-A’s and become colored as it flows down the strip. When it hits the test like those Antibody-A’s will bind the analyte too. So if analyte is present we form a “sandwich” with two Antibody-A’s as the bread (one bound to a colored marker and one bound to the strip) and the analyte as our filling. If there’s no analyte (or if there is and there are extra Antibody-A’s) they will get grabbed by the Antibody-B’s at the control line.

PS: Antigen not Antigene. Antigen just means something an antibody binds to. Doesn’t have to be (and usually isn’t) anything genetic.

> space, which is something

I think this is the root of your trouble.

The easiest answer to your original question, I believe, is simply "no".

A deeper answer would be to redirect you towards learning the nature of EM radiation. Folk here are wrestling with this because it's hard to ascertain adequately the root(s) of your misconceptions.

To me, at least, it seems you're stuck in something akin to where people were more than a century ago where they were convinced light had to be a wave in some sort of medium which they dubbed the ether. You seem to be imagining "EM radiation" as some sort of disturbance in space whereby the space disturbance can be collapsed, ruptured, cavitated (whatever word you want). But our current understanding of EM radiation doesn't work like that... at all.

To better understand destructive interference of electromagnetic waves, you are going to need to fall back to learn about waves, in general. After you get used to constructive and destructive interference in waves of water in a pond, then you should wrestle with the medium-less nature of waves in the electric and magnetic fields.

[removed]

It does sound like a phrase that comes after someone explains that they need to reverse the polarity.

[removed]

What reason do you have for thinking that it might? Radiation and glass aren't exactly similar in any way, and it might be easier to properly answer your question if we knew why you ask.

[removed]

[removed]

Cavitation is a phenomenon that occurs in masses of liquids (property of mass/matter). Liquids turn into gas at certain combinations of temperature and pressure, so at a certain temperature if pressure drops (e.g. due to fluid motion), vapor will form. Radiation (generically) is related to energy (it does propagate in the vacuum), thus it cannot "cavitate".

Most labs are drawn into a handful of generic negative-pressure test tube types which contain various blood stabilizers. These are then taken to a lab where the blood is mixed with different reagents for testing. Even if infectious materials were involved in testing (which is not the case), none of the testing materials are present in the tube used for the lab draw. In addition, blood only moves into the collection bottles because they typically use negative pressure to pull blood in.

The only way testing could transmit something like HIV is if a needle was re-used between patients, but most venipuncture needles have locking safety mechanisms to prevent re-use.