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Can someone tell me how we can actually know that something is SIXTY MILLION LIGHT YEARS away? How is that even possible to measure? After a long internet search last night, the best I came up with was something called Parallax, but isn’t it just theory?? (It’s supposedly a similar process to how surveyors measure distances on land.) In space, it’s just untestable! How can you PROVE that you’re right, that it’s so insanely far away?? It can’t be MEASURED.
As I was searching for how we actually measure a light year, all I found was the theory behind it. I tried, but there was really nothing. The assumption that the speed of light is a constant across space, and that stuff just really was that far away (though there was no other proof save the movement of a star against the background, or something… but… how do we know how far the background is????)
That is the part of modern “science” that just perturbs me. I was telling Jen last night that I really am no “apologist” for any certain point of view, but those who promote the “secular” view tend to rub me the wrong way in how things are just “accepted” and stated as fact. The “conservative christian” folks rub me the wrong way with their need to have absolute truth (which I think is near impossible for us to know/have), but I must confess, when I read their stuff, I just see a way of approaching science that I am much more in tune with. I’m sure it has a lot to do with my starting point.
I did stumble upon some interesting reading though as I searched… If you’re interested. (Links below)
(And no, I’m not trying to stir up some crazy debate here. Just read and add your thoughts if you like, but I don’t care enough about any particular view point below to defend it ardently.)
- How Far Away Is That Star, And How Do You Know? (R.G. Aitken, Astronomical Society of the Pacific)
- The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe (AnswersInGenesis.org – interesting theory…)
- Light-Year (Wikipedia)
I too remain quite skeptical of scientific inquiry, but because they too have a political and ideological agenda which their human bias prevents them from ignoring. I don’t believe in the “unbiased observer” so heartily perpetrated by the scientific community – no such observer exists on our plane of reality, indeed, anywhere. I don’t think that you could even say that God is unbiased, but I guess that’s another debate entirely (I think we count on his bias, i.e. grace).
I also am dubious of anybody clearly ignoring evidence we already have … raw data exists, and for somebody to say “the dinosaurs weren’t REALLY there, God made them to trick us!” or “the speed of light has changed through our recorded history” is smoking something – yes, I’m sure the speed of light has changed, but mostly because people recorded it differently. Now, maybe it has changed, who knows, but using “historical data” from past experiments using rudimentary technology isn’t really a way to measure change over time. Heck, we don’t even know if TIME itself is constant, thus returning us to the whole problem we started with. At some level, reasoning and science go out the window in uncertainty and a simple matter of a leap of faith is required. In philosophy we call it “fideism:” the understanding that every belief is just that – a leap of faith, not a so-called “rational” decision.
To be fair, science has done a lot that is good, and I’m of the belief that, properly interpreted, the scientific data only supports a properly interpreted Bible. But the key words are always “properly interpreted” which is so, so hard.
My philosophy professor told us this fantastic thing in class today about Christians – we are more free than atheists in our ability to look at the evidence. God created everything, and if we accept that, the MANNER in which He created suddenly no longer matters as much and so we can spend our time thoughtfully debating which method He might have used. Atheists and naturalists have no such recourse, their only option is to believe the theory of evolution because in their world there IS no omnipotent being who could have done whatever He pleased.
Hey Chris
That’s an interesting point about having less “at stake”… cause that’s kinda the feel I got when reading the various articles (and from other times). I mean, there are certainly Christians who also have lots “at stake” (I know a guy who really needs the earth to be at the center of the universe with everything revolving around it for the Bible to be true and God to be trustworthy… wow…) But I’ve never heard anyone admit/say that 🙂
Also, I’m totally with you on the bias thing. I mean, I completely understand I have one too, but… can’t we just admit that we can’t know some stuff, and have fun piecing together what we do know? Nope. We have agendas to protect. Sad.
I am a fan of science. I listen to science podcasts. I read science news. I love hearing of the latest discoveries… but dude, it just ticks me off when that agenda or assumptions or whatever creeps in there. (OK, sometimes it just makes me chuckle, but sometimes I do get pretty ticked off!)
Thanks for the comments… sounds like you are low on the agenda scale too. Nice to have a dialogue about cool stuff with folks like that 🙂
Of course I have an agenda, we all do. My agenda is truth. 🙂 I hope, anyway.
I’ve been planning on doing a post on the politics of science at some point here (speaking as a former science student). Maybe once all my assignments are done soon I’ll get to it …
And regarding the “center of the unvierse” thing … technically with general relativity, it still is: if you change your perspective. The entire universe can rotate around the earth if you want to think of it like that. A thing of beauty, that theory …
You might check out the Hipparcos section of this page. It’s the simplest explanation I’ve been able to easily find.
http://astronexus.com/book/print/29
However, I’m curious as to why your first instinct seems to be to distrust scientific claims possibly even before making significant effort to understand them.
Do you trust Apple’s claimed speed of your beloved Macs’ processors? If you haven’t studied clock speed and quartz/silica frequency functions, maybe you should clamor about how we can know that a microchip can actually perform operations at such an ungraspable pace as a Ghz.
There is scientific theory separate from proven fact, and which is being presented often needs to be stated more clearly. I’m not saying trust everything you hear/read from what seems like a reputable source…you should still attempt to discover the source’s motives/agenda and gain an understanding of the subject yourself if you’re really interested. I guess my wish for you is that you might give experts in their fields a little more benefit before you shower them with your boundless doubt.
-heent
Heeeeeent!
We were just talking about you guys last night, me and Jen. Just wondered how the Heents are doing 🙂 Shoot us an e-mail (or perhaps I will when I return from basketball) 😉
I checked out that link, and that was cool. I liked the little animation actually. I could visually see more of how we could think we might measure such a thing. It certainly makes sense theoretcially (except that I still don’t know what we’re measuring against…)
My problem is what you said, that was accept things that can’t be proven (we can not actually go to the star, and see how far it is… or bounce some sort of waves off of it and “hear back” to measure the distance) we accept those as fact rather than clearly stating that we just can’t know, but here’s our best guess. I really think that’s it.
I mentioned above… I love science! I love trying to figure out the world/universe around us. I love new discoveries, and old ones too 🙂 I just wish there wasn’t such smug certainty in so many places, I guess. Not sure why I notice it so much, or why it bothers me, but I do 🙁
Oh yeah… as for the Gigaherz or flops or whatever 🙂 Not sure… I guess I don’t think of that as “astronomical” numbers (pun intended!). I do think it’s pretty amazing. But I also figure it can be tested, right? You can take a block of data that is a precise size, and measure the time it takes to process it. It’s measurable, and you can do it again and again.
So, really, that’s all. My “boundless doubt” 🙂 was just wondering why we say things “as fact” that we can’t (in my mind) possibly know. We can sure guess, and we may be right… but…
Now, the other cool thing I thought about this just today… we are incredibly accurate at knowing how far and exactly where planets and even comets, so… are those measured the same way? (Again, they are reachable by us, so as far as I know we are measuring/mapping distances there using something like radio waves bouncing back to us, and measuring the distance by the time it takes them to travel.) If it’s the same method though, we’re doing a pretty good job of proving that it works! 🙂
So, dude… I don’t mean to be a “doubt first” kinda person, but I’m not sure doubt is a bad thing. I generally am a very trusting person, actually… but when I hear something that doesn’t seem to make sense to me, I check into it. (Which I did do with this star distance thing…) My issue remains mostly semantic (or idealogical?). I just wish we could be less “certain” about things we can’t really be certain about 🙂
All that said… thanks for the link. Send more if you like! 🙂
Oh, Chris…
I’m sure others might see it differently (as I am also sure that I am unfairly seeing others) but really… my only agenda is to have no agenda! (So, I guess I just admitted that I have one…) 🙂
Yeah, sorry about the “boundless” doubt…I guess that was a product of my boundless sarcasm.
-heent
I always enjoy a good dose of Heentian “boundless” sarcasm… 🙂