Yeah, maybe I'm too sensitive: it seemed like a cheap shot along with some of the ensuing comments, but maybe you're right...
If that's His hand, what part of His anatomy is this then: BTW, I think this thread is sexist. There is no proof so far that God is a Man, therefore I urge you to write He/she whenever you mention the Lord.
It is sort of funny but if you examine the assumptions involved in what we think is the size of the universe it is possible to conclude that we actually don't have a clue as to how far away all but the closest stars are. We measure the distance to the closest stars by looking at where they are, then wait 6 months until the earth is opposite where it was relative to the sun and we take another look and use geometry to figure out the distance. Pretty accurate for the few stars that are really close, useless for the trillions of further ones. We assume things about the red shift and expanding universe that we have no way of actually checking in measuring the distances to all the rest of the stuff out there.
When I first saw the Hubble photos, I was really impressed at how beautiful outer space was, until I found out that they had some artists at the Goddard Space Flight Center who were coloring them. I use to work for the NACA which was the forerunner of NASA and who really did all the great early airplane and rocket work including the X1, X2 and X15. When I meet someone who works for NASA now, I always ask them if they have ever heard of the NACA. Invariable, they say no. regards
You lost me on this one. Why would the earth being in a different part of it's orbit "mess up" astronomical caculations to something 4 billion light years away? Also, red shift calculations are only a small part of the evidence for the Big Bang event. And the exact opposite is true by; the way: there are a few blue shifted galaxies because of gravitational interactions for galaxies that are closest to us. All others are red shifted.
The measurements are not messed up, the angles used for the calculations become impossibly small as the distance to the star increases. The red and blue shifts are ASSUMED to be from velocity differences, they could just be DIFFERENT COLORS. (Please excuse the yelling, just trying to clarify the argument.) Astronomers could be in fantasy land for all we are able to prove. I'm just pointing out that the assumptions could be completely wrong and we would therefore not have a single clue as to how far away most stars are. A good argument has to have two things 1) good assumptions and 2) good logic. If you don't learn to question and understand both you can't assess what you are being told. Anyhow, that is one funny picture!!
Nah, they know what colors they are. They can use spectroscopy and measure the shift in absorption lines caused by various elements.