Earth-like planet found

It seems that Tom has given up this argument.  However, Max, I am very interested to hear more about these "independent methods" of determining the AU.  If the AU can be verified without assuming the sphericity of the Earth, then it proves that Rowbotham's much smaller value for the distance between the Earth and Sun is incorrect.  This would greatly damage the FE position.  Can you shed more light on this?  Thanks.

Raa, you are a tard.  That's all I have to say for now.

It seems that Tom has given up this argument.  However, Max, I am very interested to hear more about these "independent methods" of determining the AU.  If the AU can be verified without assuming the sphericity of the Earth, then it proves that Rowbotham's much smaller value for the distance between the Earth and Sun is incorrect.  This would greatly damage the FE position.  Can you shed more light on this?

this topic should be called

"Earth-like man found"

and by the way, are martians humans or animals

I know this answer will be attempted by humans, and I've already got my eye zoomed and focusing on a few of them

don' be a flesh pot and don't let your big daddy protect you

Awesome post. Run, Tom! Logic and reason approaching! There's not much time!!!!

All true. But as I said, the parallax method is not the only way we have to determine the distance to a star.  There is another highly confirmed method called spectroscopic parallax, which, despite the name, has nothing to do with measuring physical parallax of the star, and would still work regardless of the Earths motion.

In short, spectroscopic parallax makes use of the known relationship between a stars spectral type (it's color) and it's luminosity.  We know how bright Gliese 581 would be if we were standing 10 parsecs away (what we call it's absolute magnitude) and we know how much light we actually do receive from Gliese 581 (it's apparent magnitude.)  We also know Gliese 581's color (or more precisely, it's peak wavelength) by simply taking a spectrum of it's light.

Unfortunately, measuring the AU with this method is a little difficult because we can't bounce radio waves directly off of the sun.  The sun (being a superheated gas) tends to absorb radio waves rather than reflect them.  So it's not as simple as pointing a radio transmitter at the sun and measuring the distance.

Fortunately, we don't have to do this.  We can use the planets.

Max, quite frankly your reasoning is fallacious.

What you neglect to mention is that looking at the spectrum of a star's light and comparing it with the spectrum of different stars with known values is entirely irrelevant when the Astronomical Unit is an unknown value in the first place. It simply does not matter what you believe the brightness of Gliese 581 might be if you were standing 10 parsecs away - the parsec is a value which is nothing more than multiples of an AU.

If the AU is wrong, Spectroscopic Parallax is wrong.

This link shows us how modern Round Earth science calculated the distance between the Earth and Sun - the Astronomical Unit - using the transit of Venus. You will immediately notice that the equations are highly dependent on the assumption of a Round Earth.

Who allegedly sent those probes into space and bounced radio waves off of the planets?

That's right.

No it's not.  We define absolute magnitude as the total luminosity received from a star at a distance of 10 parsecs because it's a convenient unit, but it need not be defined that way.  We can redefine a stars absolute magnitude as its luminosity at 3*10^14 kilometers if you would prefer, this just makes the math a little more complex.  I say again, spectroscopic parallax works regardless of an accurate measurement of the parsec or the AU.

In practice this technique is not very precise in determining the distance to an individual star. Uncertainties in the absolute magnitude of stars of specific spectral and luminosity class range from about 0.7 up to 1.25 magnitudes. These then give a factor of 1.4 to 1.8 × variation in the resultant distance. Nonetheless it is still an important methods for estimating distance to stars beyond direct trigonometric parallax measurement.

That link shows one way of calculating the AU, but I specifically did not explain this method because I know that it assumes the RE.  But read my post again, Tom.  You will notice I described a completely different way of deriving the AU, which relies on radar ranging, and works regardless of the shape of the Earth.

Who bounced RADAR off of Mercury? What peer review process did it go through? Who owns these billion dollar radar arrays? This entire process should be transparent if you expect me to believe your wild claim which invokes unattainable technology.

by plane trigonometry, in special connection with carefully measured base lines, Samuel Birley Robotham has demonstrated and placed beyond all power of doubt that the sun, moon, and stars are all within a distance of a few thousand miles from the surface of the earth. Therefore they are very small objects. Therefore not worlds. And therefore, from analogy, offers no logical reason or pretext for concluding that current Spectroscopic Parallax charts have any meaningful value.

Again your argument is fallacious. I don't care what you assign a star's spectral or luminosity class to be - comparing the intensity of different stars says nothing about the distance to those stars. Using photometry it may be possible to measure an apparent magnitude, but for all you know you may be looking at different types of stars with different intensities. The assumption is that all stars are exactly the same, following exactly the same life cycles, only varying in distance.

If we look at this link we can immediately see that Spectroscopic Parallax uses predefined variables derived from traditional parallax equations. The website tells us "? Crucis is an M3 III star with a measured value of mV = 1.63 and a colour index of +1.60. This means that it is a red giant." Under no pretense does it tell us why those variables should imply a red giant.

The distance modulus equation uses predefined variables as well. A star with an apparent luminosity, magnitude, and color value is presumed to have an effective temperature which matches up to the chart. These values are then thrown into an equation and a distance is estimated.

A quote from the site:

0.   In practice this technique is not very precise in determining the distance to an individual star. Uncertainties in the absolute magnitude of stars of specific spectral and luminosity class range from about 0.7 up to 1.25 magnitudes. These then give a factor of 1.4 to 1.8 × variation in the resultant distance. Nonetheless it is still an important methods for estimating distance to stars beyond direct trigonometric parallax measurement.

It should be immediately obvious that what astronomers are doing is assigning a luminosity class to a star and judging a distance based on its magnitude. This is analogous to assigning distance values to the intensity of light bulbs on a city nightscape. Under what pretense is the base distance calculated if no one has ever physically measured the distance to those lights mile by mile? Those lights can be 4 miles away or 40 miles away. We can make comparison charts for either of these assumptions.

Ultimately astronomical equations assume that the stars are far away from us and from each other. In reality this is a piece of self-deception. It must first be proved that the stars are worlds. To do this, or to make it even remotely possible that they are so, it must first be proved that they are millions of miles distant from the earth, and from each other, and are hundreds or thousands of miles in diameter.

Zetetic Astronomers are simply observers, interpreting the lights in the night sky based on assumptions by an antiquated and outdated belief system