It’s also interesting how the speed of light was determined.
It involved timing of Jupiter’s moons coming around her when Jupiter is on this side of the sun with us as opposed to the timing when Jupiter is opposite the solar system from us.
The difference in the two times is how much longer the light waves took to arrive here when Jupiter was on the other side of the sun.
It involved timing of Jupiter’s moons coming around her when Jupiter is on this side of the sun...
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sparklite2, I heard Professor Richard Feynman discuss that in one of his lectures. It's fascinating. BTW, many of Feynman's introductory lectures on gravitation, etc. can be found on YouTube. I have converted a few to mp3 files and listened on the way to work. Great stuff!
Your example of Jupiter measurements is telling to me because it's decidedly of a "solar system scale". In other words, a great deal of (relative) accuracy can be arrived at through human built instruments.
However, when you consider that the center of our tiny solar system is calculated at 25,000 light years away and the closest other galaxy is 158,000 light years away. And the closest spiral galaxy, Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away.
When you consider those distances, human verification of deep space astronomical theories is a crap shoot.
To me as a layman, a science like astronomy is of a different realm, one where religious faith in man's abilities and deep state space science overpower the measurable probabilities that give precision to mechanical and electrical engineering.
Am I mistaken?