DrNoGods wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 5:51 pm
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:
Except if the star were actually not that distance your scenario evaporates. No one has ever been out there in the universe. So when you see the light
here the only explanation is that an electron dropped energy level.
Do we know there are only four quantum levels out there? If so, how exactly? Could anything else out there that we never heard of yet cause spectral lines to shift? If so how would you know? All you see is light here. You assume that whatever shifts light, or produces a line or etc etc etc must be from causes we know here in our fishbowl. Could anything we do not know about cause wavelengths to shift out there? etc etc You do not even know what time was involved in the light getting here!
You (apparently) are trying to argue that when the photons from the star get "here" they somehow change their behavior.
No. Once here their behaviour must conform to our time and space and laws.
What evidence do you have for that, or what reasoning?
Unless you prove that time exists out there precisely as we know it here, then you may not tell us how much time anything took to get here. Even if all laws were the same out there, unless time also existed, spectra from light can tell us nothing about origins!
And how close does the photon have to get to the spectrometer before it suddenly decides to behave differently?
I think you are asking what are the limits to the fishbowl. (of where our time and space are known to exist the same) Well, I would say that would be the distance we KNOW it to exist and have been!
How far has man been? Basically to the moon, more or less. The furthest probe is not even a single light day away! So forget speaking about anything beyond that distance!
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.
That is a moot point. (as to whether forces and laws out there are the same or not) You see, unless TIME existed the same out there, it doesn't matter! Because what you thought took millions or billions of years to get here may have taken weeks or moments! We also do not know if time could affect the red shift of light! How would light behave if time itself were different along it's path? You merely take the causes of redshift we are familiar with here in the fishbowl, and try to claim that is all that could be affecting light way out there in the unknown as well! That is pure belief.