Qualifies· moderateTRN-E006
The proponent physics reply: flashes should be sharp
- what the source states
- Optical principles and atmospheric physics imply that unresolved flashes lasting less than a second naturally appear sharper and more circular than stellar images, particularly on long-exposure plates where stars are blurred by seeing and tracking errors; the sharp profiles are therefore consistent with the transient interpretation.
- what we infer
- This converts the sharpness observation from an artifact signature into an ambiguous one — but only argumentatively. No one has exposed period-appropriate emulsion to controlled sub-second flashes and measured whether real flash profiles match the nine marks (TRN-R002).
- limitations
- A physics argument, not a measurement; the two profile distributions (flash vs artifact) may overlap entirely, in which case sharpness discriminates nothing.
- Proponent-team preprint, not peer reviewed.