It is my understanding that for something to be scientific fact it has to be repeatable and observable.
How is the age of a star able to be proved scientifically?
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The lifetime of a star is fairly reliably connected to its mass and its brightness (for 90% of stars, known as “main sequence” stars) because its brightness depends on how fast it uses its fuel (hydrogen). Slightly counterintuitively, larger, more massive stars are shorter lived than smaller ones, because they burn fuel so much faster.
We have fancy equipment that can detect the “fingerprints” of different elements in a star and these help us work out how much hydrogen it has compared to how much helium, the product from hydrogen fusion. This ratio of hydrogen to helium changes predictably over the life of a star so we can determine its age by measuring the ratio.
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