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Replying to dad1 in post #286]
That is misinformation. You cannot directly do anything in the far universe. You only get the light AFTER it arrives HERE! Naturally everything once it is here must operate the way things must operate here in our time and space and laws. So it IS belief alone. Nothing else.
What? Of course you can only measure the photons once they get here (that's obvious), but it is
where they originated that is the point that you seem to be missing (or misunderstanding). If a hygrogen atom at a star 1 billion light years away emits a photon due to an electron dropping from a higher energy level to the first excited level it is part of the so-called Balmer series. On Earth, this is in the visible wavelength region so is often used for demonstrations. We know all about this series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_series
If the emitted photons from the star travel towards Earth and eventually make it here (as many do), we can measure them and generally see the Balmer pattern red shifted (ie. to longer wavelengths). We know how that works as well (both the cosmoligical redshift due to the expansion of the universe (Hubble's law), and the Doppler shift):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
You (apparently) are trying to argue that when the photons from the star get "here" they somehow change their behavior. What evidence do you have for that, or what reasoning? And how close does the photon have to get to the spectrometer before it suddenly decides to behave differently? Is that mm, miles, a light year? There's no reason to believe that a photon emitted from a distant star will not be the same photon that arrives here millions or billions of years later, subject to redshifts which we understand very well. A wealth of information is contained in these photons.
Your argument sounds like another one pulled from thin air with no basis or backup. Just hand waving.