You can login if you already have an account or register by clicking the button below.
Registering is free and all you need is a username and password. We never ask you for your e-mail.
There's no way to confirm or deny the assumptions, and that's besides that the two furthest away points Earth travels still makes triangulating their distance like guessing when two parallel lines will intersect. The numbers given for star distances are assumptions which cannot be empirically verified.. far from absolute fact.
What in saying is that I am 100% sure that the distance can be empirically identified. I mean, we know how long it takes light to cover a certain distance (called a light year) because we can measure the speed of light... And we can also tell how "old" light is, for lack of a better term.
That gives us a damn good estimate on how far away a star is.
So what I'm asking is why you think it can't be measured.
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.
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.
view the rest of the comments →
[–] frankenham ago
There's no way to confirm or deny the assumptions, and that's besides that the two furthest away points Earth travels still makes triangulating their distance like guessing when two parallel lines will intersect. The numbers given for star distances are assumptions which cannot be empirically verified.. far from absolute fact.
[–] CapinBoredface ago
What in saying is that I am 100% sure that the distance can be empirically identified. I mean, we know how long it takes light to cover a certain distance (called a light year) because we can measure the speed of light... And we can also tell how "old" light is, for lack of a better term.
That gives us a damn good estimate on how far away a star is.
So what I'm asking is why you think it can't be measured.
[–] 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.
[–] 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.