How can we be confident about universal properties, or anything for that matter, in astrophysics when we can’t actually do experiments on stars, distant planets, etc. ?

Question

How can we be confident about universal properties, or anything for that matter, in astrophysics when we can’t actually do experiments on stars, distant planets, etc. ?

In: 63

Answer 1

When you have something you can only observe, and not do experiments directly on, you can still do “experiments” to test hypotheses.

For example, if you’re looking at visible light data from some stars, and you think you have an idea about what’s going on — you can try and predict what you’d see in infrared.

The idea is that a good, simple scientific explanation can usually be based on only a subset of observations: the rest fall in line with those predictions.

There are a lot of stars out there, in every direction and at all sorts of distances.