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[–] svipbo ago 

It's a philosophical question really what it means to confirm a distance, but I'm sure that distances to stars are far from groundless speculation.

There's the same problem with all of cosmology. How do you know that the sun is made of hydrogen, and isn't a ball of iron? All you can say is observations are consistent with the theory that it's made of hydrogen.

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[–] frankenham ago 

What do you mean we can tell how old light is?

Do you understand what empirical proof is? I'm not trying to be condescending I'm just trying to say there's a big difference between empirical and indirect science. For example you can't prove when a photograph was taken, technically you can't even empirically prove anything in the past.. it's all beyond direct observation.

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[–] Facade ago 

You're taking a very hardline approach to empirical science. If you want to be technical, there are VERY few things we can 'empirically' measure. I believe there is pretty much just position (in space and in time). Thats it. Literally, and I mean literally, everything else is extrapolated from those. They are they ONLY things we can measure directly. Electromagnetic fields, kinematics, thermodynamics, all of it is based on equations that transform position in space and time into more advanced concepts. If you're going to say we can't confirm how far stars are away from each other empirically, then you must also reject other similar equations as non-empiric. Which is fine. But now you're arguing semantics of what we should call empirical science, and nothing more. There is quite clearly very solid science that is 'theoretical' by this hardline definition, so the separation between the two becomes almost meaningless.