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The Reason Why Distant Stars Can't Be Accurately Measured:
Forum List | Follow Ups | Post Message | Back to Thread Topics Posted by Kenny Thornton on July 27, 2002 01:44:34 UTC |
"First, no one can measure star distance accurately. The farthest accurate distance man can measure is 20 light years (some textbooks say up to 100), not several billion light years. Man measures star distances using parallax trigonometry. By choosing two measurable observation points and making an imaginary triangle to a third point, and using simple trigonometry, man calculates the distance to the third point. The most distant observation points available are the positions of the earth in solar orbit six months apart, say June and December. This would be a base for our imaginary triangle of 186,000,000 miles or 16 light minutes. There are 525,948 minutes in a year. Even if the nearest star were only one light year away (and it isn’t), the angle at the third point measures .017 degrees. In simpler terms, a triangle like this would be the same angle two surveyors would see if they were standing sixteen inches apart and focusing on a third point 8.24 miles away. If they stayed 16 inches apart and focused on a dot 824 miles away, they would have the same angle as an astronomer measuring a point 100 light years away. A point 5 million light years away is impossible to figure with trigonometry. The stars may be that far away but modern man has no way of measuring those great distances. No one can state definitively the distance to the stars. The stars may indeed be billions of light years away, but man cannot measure those distances."
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