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Offline AATW

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #20 on: January 27, 2018, 08:45:01 AM »
The wiki shows that we can use the same data that computed the sun to be millions of miles away, to be thousands of miles away. The data used is the same.
Yes, that is another possible explanation - distant sun means pretty much parallel rays so for the shadows to be different the surface must be curved.
It is possible that IF the sun is much closer then the same effect could be seen on a flat surface, but the article your own Wiki links to concludes:

Quote
We conclude that the flat earth/near sun model does not work.

You are the one claiming that the alternative interpretation of the data is the correct one - contrary to basically everyone else in science.
So prove it. You can take some observations, do some triangulation.
You keep dodging this because at some level you know would happen.

And it's bit rich pretending to talk knowledgeably about shadows and how to interpret data from experiments on them when you have claimed that if I raise my hand above my head then because a distant lamp appears below my hand level the photons from that lamp are angled up towards it. 
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Macarios

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #21 on: January 27, 2018, 10:18:05 AM »
If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?
Again, timeanddate.com gives you data you can use.  You agree it is correct for you location.

SunCalc.org also gives data.
TimeAndDate gives Sun altitude angle with one decimal, SunCalc with two decimals.
Both are correct for Clemmons, NC and for Belgrade, Serbia.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like inquisitive needs volunteers for "his" experiment.

Sun can be star or not, it is still "up there" (celestial body).
We can select two points to measure its height (h) above the ground.
If you need third point, find one at same longitude.

Here's the data, check everything out, be Zetetic (investigative), calculate yourself.
Correct my errors:

Using New Castle, PA, USA and Clemmons, NC, USA.
Both at longitude 80.3 degrees west.
(For example, your third point could be Miami, FL, USA. Find data and calculate.)

New Castle at 554.5 km from Clemmons (d), 4546.5 km from Equator (En).
New Castle Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 49.42 degrees (T1).
Clemmons at 3992 km from Equator (Ec).
Clemmons Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 54.40 degrees (T2).

For flat ground we have our measurement as follows:

From triangle New Castle - Clemmons - Sun : Sun height 3949 km.
h = d * tan(T1) * tan(T2) / (tan(T2) - tan(T1))

From right triangle New Castle - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5308 km.
h = En * tan(T1)

From right triangle Clemmons - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5494 km.
h = Ec * tan(T2)

 ~ 0 ~

Using formula from https://wiki.tfes.org/Distance_to_the_Sun, we have:
b = 554.5 km
theta1 = 90 - 54.4 = 35.6 degrees
theta2 = 49.42 degrees

b = h ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) )
h = b / ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) ) = 554.5 / (1.167 - 0.716) = 554.5 / 0.451

Sun height h = 1229.49 km.

JohnAdams1145

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #22 on: January 27, 2018, 10:22:01 AM »
I should also point out that we can easily prove that the stars are much farther than the few thousand miles Tom puts them at. This is stupidly easy to see with a rudimentary knowledge of the Doppler effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect One can easily see that the red-shifted galaxies must be moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Now one might say, well speed is not the same thing as position. And I would respond that galaxies moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light take only a few seconds to move many tens of thousands of miles; so if I weren't right a second ago, now I'm right.

Of course, Tom still hasn't taken my suggestion and at the very least tried to understand basic science. This is why he doesn't understand why his parallax experiment is junk (hint: your angle measurements are taken with respect to different reference normals -- since we don't know whether they are parallel or not, you need to take them at a lot of locations).

Macarios

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #23 on: January 27, 2018, 11:29:44 AM »
I should also point out that we can easily prove that the stars are much farther than the few thousand miles Tom puts them at. This is stupidly easy to see with a rudimentary knowledge of the Doppler effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect One can easily see that the red-shifted galaxies must be moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Now one might say, well speed is not the same thing as position. And I would respond that galaxies moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light take only a few seconds to move many tens of thousands of miles; so if I weren't right a second ago, now I'm right.

Of course, Tom still hasn't taken my suggestion and at the very least tried to understand basic science. This is why he doesn't understand why his parallax experiment is junk (hint: your angle measurements are taken with respect to different reference normals -- since we don't know whether they are parallel or not, you need to take them at a lot of locations).

Such proof could be "blurred" in the eyes of less educated readers.
Simple stuff explainable to everyone is better.

For example, lunar parallax can show distance to the Moon to be 380 000 km.
Sextant could be as low as $22 on eBay, and it is best affordable way to measure angles.
Cheapest models can measure angles with accuracy within 0.2 arcminute.

Find dark place without light pollution. Mark your latitude.
Wait till Moon is about 15 degrees before highest point (a bit to the left from due south).
Find star at its path, few degrees away, and measure angle to the Moon (not to the horizon).
(Hold sextant almost horizontally to align it with line connecting Moon and selected star.)

Wait EXACTLY two hours, for the Moon to move 30 degrees.
If you are at latitude of 45 degrees, it will actually be your movement by about 2350 km.
If you are at Equator, your movement will be about 3325 km.

(Or you can say sky moved for that much. In both cases it is relative movement between the two.)

Measure the angle between Moon and selected star and calculate difference.

If they are at same distance, angle will stay the same.
But if star is much farther than Moon, you will have change of the angle between them.
From latitude of 45 degrees you will have change of about 21 arcminutes (0.35 degrees).
Distance to the moon will be 2350 / tan(0.35) = 2350 / 0.006 = 384 695 km.
Ofcourse, it could be a bit more or less, because we could make an error in our readings.
If we measure 20 arcminutes we get distance to Moon of 404 000 km.
If we measure 22 arcminutes we get distance to Moon of 367 000 km.

But it would still be pretty far.
And it will show how much farther is the selected star.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is how to understand sextant:



NOTE: For error correction part, you have to adjust index arm to zero including micrometer.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #24 on: January 27, 2018, 12:39:00 PM »
The wiki shows that we can use the same data that computed the sun to be millions of miles away, to be thousands of miles away. The data used is the same.
Yes, that is another possible explanation - distant sun means pretty much parallel rays so for the shadows to be different the surface must be curved.
It is possible that IF the sun is much closer then the same effect could be seen on a flat surface, but the article your own Wiki links to concludes:

Quote
We conclude that the flat earth/near sun model does not work.

You are the one claiming that the alternative interpretation of the data is the correct one - contrary to basically everyone else in science.
So prove it. You can take some observations, do some triangulation.
You keep dodging this because at some level you know would happen.

And it's bit rich pretending to talk knowledgeably about shadows and how to interpret data from experiments on them when you have claimed that if I raise my hand above my head then because a distant lamp appears below my hand level the photons from that lamp are angled up towards it.

Our wiki article on the sun's height specifically addresses that quote.

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #25 on: January 27, 2018, 12:42:15 PM »
If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?
Again, timeanddate.com gives you data you can use.  You agree it is correct for you location.

SunCalc.org also gives data.
TimeAndDate gives Sun altitude angle with one decimal, SunCalc with two decimals.
Both are correct for Clemmons, NC and for Belgrade, Serbia.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like inquisitive needs volunteers for "his" experiment.

Sun can be star or not, it is still "up there" (celestial body).
We can select two points to measure its height (h) above the ground.
If you need third point, find one at same longitude.

Here's the data, check everything out, be Zetetic (investigative), calculate yourself.
Correct my errors:

Using New Castle, PA, USA and Clemmons, NC, USA.
Both at longitude 80.3 degrees west.
(For example, your third point could be Miami, FL, USA. Find data and calculate.)

New Castle at 554.5 km from Clemmons (d), 4546.5 km from Equator (En).
New Castle Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 49.42 degrees (T1).
Clemmons at 3992 km from Equator (Ec).
Clemmons Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 54.40 degrees (T2).

For flat ground we have our measurement as follows:

From triangle New Castle - Clemmons - Sun : Sun height 3949 km.
h = d * tan(T1) * tan(T2) / (tan(T2) - tan(T1))

From right triangle New Castle - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5308 km.
h = En * tan(T1)

From right triangle Clemmons - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5494 km.
h = Ec * tan(T2)

 ~ 0 ~

Using formula from https://wiki.tfes.org/Distance_to_the_Sun, we have:
b = 554.5 km
theta1 = 90 - 54.4 = 35.6 degrees
theta2 = 49.42 degrees

b = h ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) )
h = b / ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) ) = 554.5 / (1.167 - 0.716) = 554.5 / 0.451

Sun height h = 1229.49 km.

That's nice, but thought experiments from some online calculators are not experiments.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2018, 12:46:41 PM »
I should also point out that we can easily prove that the stars are much farther than the few thousand miles Tom puts them at. This is stupidly easy to see with a rudimentary knowledge of the Doppler effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect One can easily see that the red-shifted galaxies must be moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Now one might say, well speed is not the same thing as position. And I would respond that galaxies moving away from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light take only a few seconds to move many tens of thousands of miles; so if I weren't right a second ago, now I'm right.

Of course, Tom still hasn't taken my suggestion and at the very least tried to understand basic science. This is why he doesn't understand why his parallax experiment is junk (hint: your angle measurements are taken with respect to different reference normals -- since we don't know whether they are parallel or not, you need to take them at a lot of locations).

We know about that. You are going to have to prove that a certain color spectrum in a star can only mean that something is moving through space towards us at incredible speeds. Are there any controlled experiments on the stars you can refer to that specifically proves the theory of the Relativistic Doppler Effect (as opposed to the Doppler Effect) ?
« Last Edit: January 27, 2018, 12:55:31 PM by Tom Bishop »

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #27 on: January 27, 2018, 02:42:57 PM »
If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?
Again, timeanddate.com gives you data you can use.  You agree it is correct for you location.

SunCalc.org also gives data.
TimeAndDate gives Sun altitude angle with one decimal, SunCalc with two decimals.
Both are correct for Clemmons, NC and for Belgrade, Serbia.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like inquisitive needs volunteers for "his" experiment.

Sun can be star or not, it is still "up there" (celestial body).
We can select two points to measure its height (h) above the ground.
If you need third point, find one at same longitude.

Here's the data, check everything out, be Zetetic (investigative), calculate yourself.
Correct my errors:

Using New Castle, PA, USA and Clemmons, NC, USA.
Both at longitude 80.3 degrees west.
(For example, your third point could be Miami, FL, USA. Find data and calculate.)

New Castle at 554.5 km from Clemmons (d), 4546.5 km from Equator (En).
New Castle Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 49.42 degrees (T1).
Clemmons at 3992 km from Equator (Ec).
Clemmons Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 54.40 degrees (T2).

For flat ground we have our measurement as follows:

From triangle New Castle - Clemmons - Sun : Sun height 3949 km.
h = d * tan(T1) * tan(T2) / (tan(T2) - tan(T1))

From right triangle New Castle - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5308 km.
h = En * tan(T1)

From right triangle Clemmons - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5494 km.
h = Ec * tan(T2)

 ~ 0 ~

Using formula from https://wiki.tfes.org/Distance_to_the_Sun, we have:
b = 554.5 km
theta1 = 90 - 54.4 = 35.6 degrees
theta2 = 49.42 degrees

b = h ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) )
h = b / ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) ) = 554.5 / (1.167 - 0.716) = 554.5 / 0.451

Sun height h = 1229.49 km.

That's nice, but thought experiments from some online calculators are not experiments.
You have the data, please use it to determine the shape of the earth. 

Unless you have a specific proposal for an experiment to determine the shape of the earth.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #28 on: January 27, 2018, 02:50:17 PM »
You have the data, please use it to determine the shape of the earth. 

Unless you have a specific proposal for an experiment to determine the shape of the earth.

How long have you been posting on this forum? You should know enough that your thought experiments aren't good enough evidence here.

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #29 on: January 27, 2018, 04:13:43 PM »
We know about that. You are going to have to prove that a certain color spectrum in a star can only mean that something is moving through space towards us at incredible speeds. Are there any controlled experiments on the stars you can refer to that specifically proves the theory of the Relativistic Doppler Effect (as opposed to the Doppler Effect) ?

again, it's not about color.  it's about the position of missing wavelengths.  also they aren't moving toward us; they're moving away.

also the effect of velocity on the position of absorption lines is well-documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ives%E2%80%93Stilwell_experiment

and i explained several other methods of verifying these predictions: looking at objects whose brightness you know and measuring how bright it appears; plotting velocity against brightness; comparing it to other distance measurements you know are well-calibrated; et cetera.
I have visited from prestigious research institutions of the highest caliber, to which only our administrator holds with confidence.

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #30 on: January 27, 2018, 04:24:00 PM »
You have the data, please use it to determine the shape of the earth. 

Unless you have a specific proposal for an experiment to determine the shape of the earth.

How long have you been posting on this forum? You should know enough that your thought experiments aren't good enough evidence here.
Yet you refuse to give details of how you would verify the shape of the earth.

Measuring angles and distances and then doing the maths is not a 'thought' experiment.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2018, 04:26:02 PM by inquisitive »

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Offline Rounder

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #31 on: January 27, 2018, 05:47:53 PM »
If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?

What?  It is embodied in the durable materials from which these monuments are constructed!  They memorialize the angles to the equinox sun.
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Rama Set

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #32 on: January 27, 2018, 06:00:52 PM »
Here are some references to experiments that confirmed predictions of special relativity pertaining to the relativistic Doppler effect:

Quote
The relativistic Doppler effect has “classical” and due to dilation of moving clock – “relativistic” components.

Transverse Doppler effect is purely relativistic effect and is in accordance with dilation of moving clock.

The Ives - Stilwell experiment tested the contribution of relativistic time dilation and was the first quantitative confirmation of time dilation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ives%E2%80%93Stilwell_experiment

Transverse Doppler Effect has also been confirmed by Mossbauer rotor experiment in centrifuge. In these experiments either absorber rotates around the source of radiation or vice versa.

Among notable experiments there are the following:

Kuendig, Hay at All, Champeney and Moon.

Hay H J, Schiffer J P, Cranshaw T E and Egelstaff P A 1960 Phys. Rev. Lett. 4 165-6

Kuendig, W. (1963). MEASUREMENT OF THE TRANSVERSE DOPPLER EFFECT IN AN ACCELERATED SYSTEM. Physical Review (U.S.) Superseded in Part by Phys. Rev.

In Champeney and Moon (1963) experiment a source and an absorber were placed on the opposite sides of the rim.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0370-1328/77/2/318/meta

Quite recently – Kholmetskii, Missevitch, Yarman https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1503/1503.05853.pdf

Related polemical articles:

Essen J 1964 Nature 202 787

Jennison R C 1964 Nature 203 395-6

E. Zanchini "Correct Interpretation of two experiments on the Transverse Doppler Shift". Phys. Scr. 86 (2012)

Essen L Bearing on the recent experiments on the special and general theories of relativity No 4934 Nature, May 23 1964

Essen L A time dilatation experiment based on the Mossbauer effect. Proc. Phys. Soc.vol.86 1965

Source: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/366957/are-there-experiments-that-measure-relativistic-doppler-effect/366974




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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #33 on: January 27, 2018, 07:29:53 PM »
Actually, I asked for a controlled experiment showing that it happens in the stars. Here is the doppler shift effect in light:



Since we can't put the stars in a laboratory to study their nature, how do we know that the natural color of the stars is always white and never simply slightly blue or red?

The stars can appear to be slightly red, orange, yellow, blue, among other colors. How can you show that it is not because they are naturally so?
« Last Edit: January 27, 2018, 07:41:57 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #34 on: January 27, 2018, 08:07:43 PM »
With respect, the level of ignorance in that post is pretty spectacular.
The way this works is that certain elements have distinctive "signatures".
The Doppler effect shifts those signatures which shows they are moving, just as the pitch of a siren indicates that an emergency vehicle is moving and whether it's higher or lower than its pitch at rest indicates whether it is moving towards you or away.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2018, 08:10:07 PM by AllAroundTheWorld »
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Rama Set

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #35 on: January 27, 2018, 08:09:50 PM »
Actually, I asked for a controlled experiment showing that it happens in the stars. Here is the doppler shift effect in light:



Since we can't put the stars in a laboratory to study their nature, how do we know that the natural color of the stars is always white and never simply slightly blue or red?

The stars can appear to be slightly red, orange, yellow, blue, among other colors. How can you show that it is not because they are naturally so?

You asked for experiments that show that Doppler effect can show that stars are light years away. These do that. Are you claiming that the photons in stars are different than photons elsewhere?

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #36 on: January 27, 2018, 08:14:01 PM »
Actually, I asked for a controlled experiment showing that it happens in the stars. Here is the doppler shift effect in light:



Since we can't put the stars in a laboratory to study their nature, how do we know that the natural color of the stars is always white and never simply slightly blue or red?

The stars can appear to be slightly red, orange, yellow, blue, among other colors. How can you show that it is not because they are naturally so?

to clarify again, it's not that we look at the star/galaxy and say "it looks red and not white, so it must be moving away from us."  it's about the position of the absorption lines on the spectrum when we pass the light from that object through a prism.  check out the first video i posted again.  that dark line that shows up will always appear on the same place in the spectrum.  if you pass light from any object through a prism, and you see that dark line, then you know the light passed through some sodium.

that said, i think the question you're getting at is something like "how do we know that those shifted absorption lines have anything to do with velocity? how do we know they aren't just a natural feature of the stars?"

the answer to that question is: laboratory experiments.  shitloads of them.  we've carefully measured the absorption features of all the elements.  we've carefully measured the effects of velocity and doppler shifts (see rama's post and/or the sitwell experiments i posted).  we did all of this in laboratory settings and simply compared these empirical results to the light we get from stars/galaxies. 

i suppose you could argue that stars/galaxies are not made of atoms/elements, but that's pure solipsism.

on a side note, your questions about star color are really good ones.  it's a different matter, but it's a fascinating one. 
I have visited from prestigious research institutions of the highest caliber, to which only our administrator holds with confidence.

Macarios

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #37 on: January 27, 2018, 08:25:48 PM »
If you are claiming that a specific observation that favors your model of the earth will be seen if some specific experiment is performed simultaneously from three different location on earth, it is your responsibility to organize that experiment. Why would you expect me to do your work for you? Are you funding me?

It has been done.

If this study has been done, where is it?
Again, timeanddate.com gives you data you can use.  You agree it is correct for you location.

SunCalc.org also gives data.
TimeAndDate gives Sun altitude angle with one decimal, SunCalc with two decimals.
Both are correct for Clemmons, NC and for Belgrade, Serbia.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looks like inquisitive needs volunteers for "his" experiment.

Sun can be star or not, it is still "up there" (celestial body).
We can select two points to measure its height (h) above the ground.
If you need third point, find one at same longitude.

Here's the data, check everything out, be Zetetic (investigative), calculate yourself.
Correct my errors:

Using New Castle, PA, USA and Clemmons, NC, USA.
Both at longitude 80.3 degrees west.
(For example, your third point could be Miami, FL, USA. Find data and calculate.)

New Castle at 554.5 km from Clemmons (d), 4546.5 km from Equator (En).
New Castle Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 49.42 degrees (T1).
Clemmons at 3992 km from Equator (Ec).
Clemmons Equinox (Mar 21) solar noon Sun altitude: 54.40 degrees (T2).

For flat ground we have our measurement as follows:

From triangle New Castle - Clemmons - Sun : Sun height 3949 km.
h = d * tan(T1) * tan(T2) / (tan(T2) - tan(T1))

From right triangle New Castle - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5308 km.
h = En * tan(T1)

From right triangle Clemmons - Equator - Sun : Sun height 5494 km.
h = Ec * tan(T2)

 ~ 0 ~

Using formula from https://wiki.tfes.org/Distance_to_the_Sun, we have:
b = 554.5 km
theta1 = 90 - 54.4 = 35.6 degrees
theta2 = 49.42 degrees

b = h ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) )
h = b / ( tan(theta2) - tan(theta1) ) = 554.5 / (1.167 - 0.716) = 554.5 / 0.451

Sun height h = 1229.49 km.

That's nice, but thought experiments from some online calculators are not experiments.

Procedure used to verify those online calculators, using real life data, I already described in two posts here:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=8574.0.

You are free to dispute the accuracy of those calculators with as many data as you want.
Bear in mind that virtually anyone can test data that any of us provide, you or me the same.

You are also free to dispute any formula that I used.
They are simple, if they are wrong it is easy to show them wrong.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2018, 08:28:24 PM by Macarios »

Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #38 on: January 28, 2018, 03:34:29 PM »
controlled experiment

so i promise i'll stop pestering this thread after this post, but i have one more genuine confusion.

you make this request for "controlled experiments" multiple times in this thread; but, your "notes on empiricism" does not at all make clear that this is the only path to knowledge.

some quotes:

Quote
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
...
[We are] concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation.
...
Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.
...
What we see and experience of the world is the extent of our total knowledge. In order for an alternative explanation to have merit, it must be observed or experienced, and it is hard to argue against that.

you're clearly trying to imply in this thread that we cannot learn anything about stars since we cannot bring them to earth.  but your own standard for an empirical statement does not include this ridiculous criterion.

so i guess what i'm asking is: is a "controlled" experiment the only path to knowledge?  why do the observations we've all presented in this thread not count as "empirical evidence from observation and experiment?"

I have visited from prestigious research institutions of the highest caliber, to which only our administrator holds with confidence.

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: "The stars are not light-years away"
« Reply #39 on: January 29, 2018, 01:23:56 AM »
controlled experiment

so i promise i'll stop pestering this thread after this post, but i have one more genuine confusion.

you make this request for "controlled experiments" multiple times in this thread; but, your "notes on empiricism" does not at all make clear that this is the only path to knowledge.

some quotes:

Quote
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
...
[We are] concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation.
...
Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.
...
What we see and experience of the world is the extent of our total knowledge. In order for an alternative explanation to have merit, it must be observed or experienced, and it is hard to argue against that.

you're clearly trying to imply in this thread that we cannot learn anything about stars since we cannot bring them to earth.  but your own standard for an empirical statement does not include this ridiculous criterion.

so i guess what i'm asking is: is a "controlled" experiment the only path to knowledge?  why do the observations we've all presented in this thread not count as "empirical evidence from observation and experiment?"

Well, you didn't observe that stars that are moving towards you are blue and that stars that are moving away from you are red. A controlled experiment with the stars would provide that observation.

Observing a blue star and logically deducing that it is because it is blue it is approaching you is rationalization, and certainly not a direct evidence that will produce a direct conclusion, as a controlled experiment would provide.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2018, 01:25:27 AM by Tom Bishop »