But what's the point then? Gluing them together or placing them next to each other would make for a much nicer final product. Maybe you could use some of the machines used in precision welding but those are designed for metals, so you would most likely need a custom one. In theory you can "melt together" any two objects that can melt but if the final result is completely irrelevant then what's the goal?

Either way, while I wasn't able to find studies that checked thermal stress in any gemstones I strongly suspect the crystals would crack if exposed to temperature gradients required to do that.

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Alpacas. "Two wild species, vicunas and guanacos, emerged. They still live in the Andes. It is believed that about 6000 years ago, alpacas were created through breeding which was heavily influenced by the vicuna."

It’s debated whether domestic dogs are species or subspecies. The arguments are arcane and extremely tedious. Since it’s pretty much irrelevant to the question here (are there five thousand species since humans appeared, or five thousand and one?) I’m not interested in this semantic argument.

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They would be more likely to experience botulism from colonized food that had a lower amount of bacteria that was already colonized yes, but from just the minute amount of spores found in SOME types of honey? Probably not. It may be possible but certainly not common. Antibiotics don’t completely remove the bacterial flora from your intestines, nor do they really change the other natural defenses the body builds up in the GI Tract other than just the flora. Sure, antibiotics kill a large number of your healthy intestinal bacteria which makes it easier for opportunistic bacteria like C. diff to take over, but they don’t completely wipe everything out. I have not heard of a case of an adult being confirmed to have been colonized by botulism from spores found in honey to the point where it actually colonized internally and began secreting the toxin. But if your flora is messed up you are certainly more susceptible to any bacterial colonization that Is consumed.

This and other answers speak to something much broader about the sciences and really, most branches of academia.

It's one thing for a potentially game-changing fact or new data to be identified or noted. The actual conclusions based on said data can take decades, or maybe reach no resolution at all, or the conclusions may change based on new analyses, etc.

Is that an unbreakable law? Alternatively, could we stop being able to determine where it is, like a Bose-Einstein condensate but on a macro level?

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Interesting point because humans are not particularly sexually dimorphic when compared to other animals, and even other primates. Sexual selection is often overlooked in evolution, but females play a large role in what traits are conserved and which are lost. For humans, parental involvement was favored over size/strength of males. This is why we pair-bond and are mostly monogamous with fewer offspring.

Yes. It happens all the time. During the Red Giant phase, the Earth will either become a bunch of new thermal energy to add into the system or become the new Mercury and the goldilocks zone will have shifted to somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. It will also be influence by temp too but anyways,it is also predicted that Titan and Europa could hypothetically reach levels tolerant enough to reach Earth's current temp.

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This^

The best way to think of yourself is as a perpetually changing petri dish with multiple organisms competing in a constantly changing environment of nutrients and exposures. Some organisms work together, some outcompete, some change/mutate. Some environments are more acidic, some less oxygen, some sunlight, some dry, some wet, etc some medications are designed to kill certain organisms and then now other competition fills in its place (think yeast infections after an antibiotic kills some bacteria previously occupying an area). Oh, and what's normal for you isn't normal for everyone.

Regarding the spores, if the environment is right and bacteria take hold it's only because the conditions were so that it outcompeted the others in that location in a high enough concentration to produce toxin that at low concentrations cause issues. Botulinum is quite potent.

(my background is microbiology and a family doc for those that care).

I'm aware that melting changes the structure, and I didn't say it would keep the color, I even suggested that it wouldn't have the gradient op was looking for and would be more of a seam than a mixture. I was imagining exactly what you described: two crystals joined by an amorphous obsidian like glass.

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So would an adult who has been on an extremely heavy course of antibiotics also be more susceptible to botulism? Similar to how they’re more vulnerable to things like C. diff?

Wouldn't your giant cube need cooling instead of heat? The heat is generated by the people and machines, so the tricky part is disappating the heat effectively. From what I understand it's harder to cool off in space than to heat up.

Since you're in a vacuum you lose all of that passive cooling we take for granted on Earth.

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