They did drop to the bottom of the balloon. How could you say that they did not?
Who said they don't drop to the bottom of the balloon? I only read a
"Wow ..."Are you saying that if this experiment were done in space/a vacuum ...
No one did the experiment in
"space/a vacuum". The experiment in the video is clearly done at room temperature and pressure.
What you could learn from it, that the space previously occupied by the balloon is instantly replenished with air from the adjacent area.
How would it be able to transition into the thousands of miles of lower temperature if, due to the temperature, the atoms drop to the floor and the pressure no longer expands outwards?
Same with your
"thousands of miles of lower temperature". This area will be refilled constantly from the adjacent area with higher pressure. The air will not leak
"into space" but into this area, where it is lost, more or less similar as if gone to space.
Unless: You extend this area to infinity, so that the pressure gradient gets near zero.
Defining the exact length of the gradient would take some looking into, but at a significant distance past the edge of the Ice Wall temperatures will drop to a point where barometric pressure nears the zero mark. At this point, whether it be thousands or millions of miles beyond the Antarctic rim, ...
How wide should this area be?
I already had an example above. Pressure gradients of 5 millibar in 100 statute miles on weather charts can be translated to gale force winds. Total pressure difference is about 1000 millibar, which results in a distance of 20,000 miles, still producing gale force winds. So this distance has to be extended by far, so wiki could be right with
millions of miles.
Any evidence for this? As pressure and temperature are decreasing this slow, a vast area around the rim could be explored.
BTW.: It's quite ridiculous to present an experiment with some 10 inch balloons, to be in any way analog to this hypothesis.