Another aspect of the Earths history that geologists have discovered by analysing ancient rock deposit patterns is that the Earths rotation in the past was faster than it is today and this trend continues. That means that in future there will be less days in a year than there are today.
We (RET) believers explain this as being due to a collision with another forming planet early in the history of the solar system. Another body collided with the still forming Earth and deflected off it. In much the same way as two snooker balls colliding and then deflecting off each other. This left the Earth spinning much more rapidly than prior to the collision and 'wobbling' on its axis like a spinning top. Since then the rate of the Earths spin has been gradually slowing down to the point where today the period of rotation is close to 24h but in future (long term future) the rate of spin will decrease further as the Earth continues to slow down and stablise. The collision itself was almost the end of the body that became Earth but some of the debris that was left over and recombined to form the Moon. The collision avoided the Earths core (one likely reason the Earth managed to recover) which has a different material make up to the mantle and crust. That explains why lunar rock samples compare closely to Earth mantle material but not core material. According to the physics of collisions between bodies that means the Moon should also be moving away from the Earth and observations and measurements have confirmed this.
I know that the way of FET is to take a more direct or literal approach. You like to use the term empirical (meaning as things appear). A flat Earth theorist would say the Sun must rotate about a central Earth because to them it looks like it does. To take things on face value as it were. That is fine if that satisfies you. But take in the bigger picture and look outside of the box and the cracks in such a model soon start to appear. Mathematics is a hugely useful tool in science and one cannot argue with mathematical models. That is not to say though that we can get the maths wrong. Put the wrong information in at the start and the resulting output will also be wrong. Correct mathematical models can reveal predictions even before they can be confirmed through observation or experiment.
FET talks about the motions of the stars, planets and Sun. But new comets and asteroids are being discovered all the time by the likes of the PANSTARRS programme and even amateur astronomers with their own equipment. Where do they come from in FET?